Interview to the... TORNADO!!!

Back to AMiWoRLD Home PageI met another developer, other opinions, other facts... I'm really enjoying this job... Have fun!!! :).

1) Hi Andrea! It's not nice to stand before AmiWorld's audience without a proper introduction. Come on, tell us everything about the Carolfi as a man (so to speak... :).

Well, I was born in Genoa on November 8th, 1975, I attended the Aldo Gastaldi Technical Institute where I got a high-school degree in computer science. My final marks were 40/60 (sob :-( ) and I'm now studying (with mixed results) to get a graduate degree in Informatics at the Genoa university. I've been loving computers since ever, but I have some other hobbies as well, like numismatics and comics. I read a lot of italian comics, but even some american and japanese ones I can borrow from friends. I like almost every kind music, as soon as it doesn't split my ears. :) My favourite group are/were the Queen, even though I admit I began to like them after Freddie Mercury's death. I like articles about paranormal and unexplicable phenomena (I'm a pretty good fan of the X-Files series).

2) Let's talk now about the Carolfi as a programmer... Explain us the "iter programmandi" that lead you to this interview! [Programming languages, past productions...]

Well, I began to love computers when I was 14 or so. I was attending my first year of high school then, and I met two future members of C.D.C., then Hurricane Software and now Hurricane Studios: Francesco Dutto and Emilio Cereseto. We became good friends, and we all shared the computer passion.
During that same year I was presented by my parents with an Amiga 500, and began to spend a lot of my spare time with it (I must confess that I didn't know what the WB was :-) ). During the second year of high school, I should have attended to a class of Pascal language, held by our teacher of Physics, but that course never started due to some misunderstandings. Nevertheless, I wanted to try some of the example programs I found in my text book: I managed to get the IBM Transformer emulator from one of my father's colleagues (the one who suggested him to buy an Amiga), and so I was able to run the Pascal compiler which came with my text book (we were already starting to be discriminated :-( ). Later I knew about a native Amiga Pascal compiler (the well-know KickPascal), and here is how some of my earlier projects saw the light. Those projects were never shared with anyone else, because I didn't know how to make them public. That time I wrote the Hurricane.unit, which was included on some Enigma issue (a famous italian Amiga magazine). That unit was later improved and expanded a lot. Its purpose was to help writing programs tha could be source-level compatible with the graph.unit that's shipped with Borland's TurboPascal. Then there were FileProtector (a file encryptor/decryptor utility), MonsterMind (a nice mastermind clone), EasyMath (a function plotter program which was also able to compute the area under a curve), EasyPhysics (extended versions of some programs included in my Physics text book), and some others I can't remember right now.
During the same period, Francesco left his Commodore 64 for an Amiga 500, and he began to write in Pascal, too. Some time later, the first text-only version of Escape Towards The Unknown was born.

3) Hurricane Sofwtare: what's the difference between it and some other software houses, apart from the nuts name? :) Tell us also something about its history: foundation date, motivations...

Actually, we are now Studios, not Software, since a company with that name already exists. The main differences between our software house and the others is that we haven't released anything yet, and that we haven't left the Amiga yet. :-)
Its history may be summed up from the previous answer, and from the two presentation lines you can find on our web pages. I might add that our name should have been C.D.C (from the initials of our surnames), but we found out that it was already in use, too. So we spent a couple of days to come up with a name which had to be original, powerful and overwhelming (remember that we were just 14). It was Hurricane Software, the hurricane bound to overwhelm you!

4) If I'm right, you have some interesting projects to satisfy your all-amigan hunger of games. What's up?

Well, apart from the now ready (and hopefully on sale) EAT and from the soon-coming Escape Towards The Unknown, we will stick to graphics adventures for a while, as long as our graphicians don't quit. But we will change both theme and subject: we are working on a language (like Lucas' Scumm) that will allow us to build different graphic adventures just by putting together a plot and graphics/sound.

5) Eat The Whistle...give us ten reasons to buy it... }:^>
  1. It's new! :-)
  2. It features nice and envolving graphics.
  3. It runs on pratically any Amiga with 2Mb of RAM or graphics board, you can even play it from a window on WB!
  4. It has spoken (sampled) comments
  5. It can be installed on HD
  6. It takes advantage of sound boards via AHI
  7. It ships with a team and tactics editor
  8. There is also an interesting "arcade" version (the ball bounces on walls, no corners, bonuses...)
  9. It will have a "manager" version
  10. If we don't make some money out of it, we won't write anything anymore :-))
6) Sincerely speaking, when we make an interview to some productive Amiga user, we are mainly interested in his ideas about our beloved "religious faith"...
Do you think that current Amiga market is able to cover developement expenses and allow some little earnings, too?

I think earnings are going to be very little. Users are few, and piracy is still very lively on the Amiga.

7) So why keeping on supporting the Amiga? Do you ever feel the temptation of migrating towards other platforms, like the PC??

PC? What's that?
Just kidding. Sometimes the idea strikes me... but it's just a moment, then I feel better again... :-))
Seriously, PC market is so huge that your team must be composed by a lot of well organized people to get a chance of having some success.

8) What's your opinion about Amiga Inc. plans?

I've just bought a BlizzardPPC, because I don't think I will have enough money to buy a new machine as soon as it is released. Moreover, how much software will be ready by then?

9) Will you support Amiga next year, too?

We will see.

10) Your programming experience lead you to turn AmigaOs inside out. What are the main differences between it and other operating systems?

Its unique capability of being adapted and transformed in almost any part. Its lightness, its speed.

11) Amiga as a community, Amiga as a dream, Amiga as a job.

It would be good to see Amiga in universities.

12) And now the most difficult question, but you must answer just the same: which is the most interesting Amiga web site of the italian scene, whose name starts with "A" and ends in "miWorld"?? =:)

I don't know such sites. :-) You said it starts with "A"? Dunno. :-))

13) Sincerely, what do you think of AmiWorld, and how would you improve it?

To be honest, I don't like the table solution very much. It strikes me as a mess of scattered stuff. Maybe you should redesign arguments layout and put in some nicer graphics.

See you, Andrea.

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