Hollywood 2.0 released
Date 8-Jan-2006 14:17:28
Topic: Software News
| Airsoft Softwair is proud to announce that the biggest update in Hollywood history is now available. Hollywood 2.0 is a massive update with endless new features. The program and its documentation have almost doubled in size. Here is a brief overview of the major new features of Hollywood 2.0 but there are tons more:
* Programming language: Hollywood has a completely new, state-of-the-art 64-bit script language which is dynamically typed and thus, extremely flexible.
* Sprites: Hollywood now offers a fully featured sprite library that is implemented completely in software. Hence, there are no limitations in sprite size, frames, colors and so on. With sprites, a lot of cool things are possible.
* Music library: The new music library allows playback of MP3 files and Protracker modules. Ptahiplay.library is no longer required!
* AROS support: Hollywood is now available for the i386 version of the Amiga Research Operating System AROS. On AROS native, Hollywood 2.0 gives a stunning performance on modern PCs. Additionally, AROS support means that you can compile x86 native AROS executables also from MorphOS, AmigaOS3 or 4 now.
* Antialias: Antialiasing is now fully implemented for TrueType fonts on all systems. Drawing routines are very fast even on 68k because of highly-optimized code.
* Powerful scheduler: Hollywood's new, powerful scheduler allows you to create exactly timed scripts which run at the same speed on every system.
* Alpha channel support: Hollywood supports graphics with an alpha channel now. Thus, it supports graphics with up to 32-bits per pixel now. Highly optimized drawing routines give excellent results even on 68k systems.
* Clip regions: Hollywood provides powerful clipping functions now that allow you to clip your graphics even to custom shaped regions (like circles, rectangles with round edges and so on).
* Collision detection: Fast pixel-exact collision detection is now offered. Even alpha channel information is taken into account by the collision detection!
* New off-screen rendering functions: All graphics calls can be used now to render to brush masks and alpha channels, too. Paves the way for unique special effects!
* New GUI: The GUI has been completely rewritten and is much more functional now. It has a showcase that lists all the examples that come with Hollywood and also has screenshots and information about them.
* New examples: Hollywood 2.0 comes with over 15 cool new examples that demonstrate the new features. Hollywood has now over 45 examples in total.
* Dramatic speed improvements: The image processing functions are up to 10 times faster now on WarpOS because the PPC is used now for everything! The drawing library is also much faster now.
* Layer improvements: When removing layers, Hollywood will now use special undo effects which work just the other way round. Furthermore, layers can be given names now. This makes it much easier to work with them because the names do not change like the ids! Finally, anim layers are possible now.
* DOS functions: Hollywood 2.0 brings many new DOS functions including a powerful CopyFile() function which can copy whole directories and is customizable through a callback function.
* New button library: A much more flexible button library has superseded the old one. The new button library calls functions instead of labels and has more features!
* Sample library: The PlaySample() command offers many more options now and can trigger OnSampleEnd and OnSampleLoop events for perfect script timing!
* Doublebuffer: Hollywood 2.0 has functions for setting up a double buffered display. Double buffer scaling is fully implemented.
* Drawing library: All commands of the draw library can draw alpha-blended graphics now, too. Additionally, there are some new functions like Arc() which draws a partial ellipse, and FloodFill() which fills a bordered region with a color.
* Compiler: The Hollywood compiler has been completely rewritten and is more configurable now. You can embed version strings and more information in your executables. It is also possible to fix the settings of your compiled scripts; for instance, you can create an executable that will only run in full screen mode.
* New fillstyles: All drawing functions can use additional fill styles. Hollywood supports the fill styles 'gradient' and 'texture' now.
* Image export: You can now save your brushes to files and also save snapshots of your script from within Hollywood!
* Independence: Hollywood does no longer require the guigfx.library, render.library, and ptahiplay.library.
* Full 1.x compatibility: Although the kernel has been completely exchanged, Hollywood 2.0 is fully compatible with the previous versions. All your scripts should run fine with Hollywood 2.0, and Hollywood Designer and Malibu do not need any updates, either.
Starting with Hollywood 2.0, the program does no longer work on systems without a graphics board. A hi/true color screenmode is now required. Hollywood comes on a CD-ROM that contains versions for all supported platforms: There are native versions of the program for AmigaOS3, WarpOS, MorphOS, AmigaOS4 and for the first time AROS (i386). A download version is also offered. If you already own Hollywood 1.x, you can buy a discounted upgrade version.
Hollywood 2.0 is Airsoft Softwair's definite Multimedia experience (Code name: Vision.1) and was given 10 of 10 points throughout by all of its beta testers. On top of all those features, Hollywood also has a cross-compiler which allows you to save executables for any platform that Hollywood supports. For example, AROS users can save AmigaOS4 executables with Hollywood. Or MorphOS users can save WarpOS executables and so on. Hollywood is the ultimate bridge between all those different AmigaOS compatible platforms! With Hollywood, you can support them all. Please visit the Airsoft Softwair web page for screenshots and a complete feature list of Hollywood. You can also order Hollywood 2.0 at the Airsoft Softwair web page.
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