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Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely wonder what's the profile of those people who find the time to write games on the Amiga! but I suspect younger people aren't interested in such old computers, and people who grew up with them are busy with family and professional obligations. And if they're not, they are so many projects to work on which are equally fun, which you could use to keep up to date for instance.

In any case, it's very cool, so thanks for sharing.

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I was born in 1991, and we had an Amiga 1000 before eventually upgrading to a PC running Windows 95. So, I was always nostalgic for Amiga, but my passion grew once I began to understand more about the unique and powerful chips driving its capabilities.

Today, I work full-time as an independent game developer. I think it's fair to say that making an Amiga game has been a lifelong dream of mine, and I finally have the skills to make it happen. I want to help demonstrate that with today's tools and proliferation of knowledge, we can breathe new life into our beloved classic hardware by creating gaming experiences with modern design principles.

Yes, the desire is very, very understandable! The question is not about the desire.

Now that you're.a grown-up with.a full-time job, and likely some personal life, working for the game industry known for its time pressure — how do you find the time to work on an Amiga game?

>independent

I don’t think it’s fair to single this individual out and quiz them on their personal circumstances.

They found time to do something they enjoyed and found a little more time to share it with like-minded people. That’s all that matters.

Thanks for taking the time to answer this question and keeping the internet cool.

Wow your family had enough money to own both an Amiga 1000 and a PC running Win95? Did y'all have enough money to buy NeXT and other weird things? I dumpster dived for computers until the mid 2000s in Palo Alto because we couldn't afford much. Pentiums were scores! But the energy costs of running them at home was expensive.

The Amiga 1000 came out in 1985. By the time Win95 was available, it was almost worthless.

> so many projects to work on which are equally fun

To a lot of people, nothing is as fun as the Amiga (or C64, or Atari, or ZX Spectrum...).

> which you could use to keep up to date for instance

If you make everything in life about your career, all of your life will turn into work.

Why practice oil painting when there's Photoshop? Why restore vintage cars when there are Teslas?

> I suspect younger people aren't interested in such old computers

Maybe not young enough to count in this group, but I love a lot of computers that were a bit before my time. I've went through the trouble to acquire a Commodore 64, recap it, and install some third-party modifications (needed to replace the PLA, but also added a mod for dual SID and a "region switch" - the region switch one is quite involved since it needs two VIC-IIs and two oscillators you can switch between.) Not the only computer I have enjoyed digging into: I have an MSX2 as well that I find very charming, though I haven't done a whole lot.

The one thing I will say is that finding time to actually try to write code for these machines is hard :) But I imagine it's just simply a matter of devoting some nights and weekends to it when inspiration strikes, not unlike most hobby work done by people who have day jobs.

I think retrocomputing is a fantastic hobby that is fascinating and rewarding. If I had one complaint, it would not actually be the amount of time it takes, it's honestly the price and difficulty in acquiring components. Seems like a lot of people have cashed in on anything that is "antique" or "vintage" in the computer market and hope for large returns. This is a shame.

As for older folks, I can't speak to it directly. But it certainly seems that some of the folks who are still writing Commodore 64 demos are doing so in large part to reconnect with their childhood. Possibly one of the most obvious artifacts of this are demos that pretty much tell a story as such, like the relatively recent demo "Mojo" by Bonzai and Pretzel Logic[1]. And obviously, attempting to do "serious" story telling in something like a demoscene production is a bit corny, but I find it very endearing in spite of that, so I'm glad they're doing it.

In any case, it's a hobby that takes a lot of time... but I guess if you want to find time that badly, you find ways.

[1]: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=232966, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXi3oJ9huiI

I present you a friend [1] building interfaces for new game controllers to old computers. Here interfacing a Nintendo Balance Board to play Decathlon in the Commodore 64 [2].

[1] https://retro.moe/2024/02/04/bluepad32-v4-0/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj5fZlt_834

I'm 5 years older than the original post author. In the beggining of the pandemic, I collected enough Atari, Amiga, and few other materials to learn assembly for fun. There's even a Udemy class on it: https://www.udemy.com/course/programming-games-for-the-atari...

My reasoning was because I worked from home, I would have more spare time. Sadly the reality is... no. Oh well, time to continue working on those :D

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