Like any other software company, Ambrosia Software has to maintain a balance between releasing new titles and updating existing ones. In an effort to let you folks know what we’re planning to do over the next six months or so, I’m going to outline our plans.
• Apeiron. This is a game that we hoped would be released quite some time ago. It is an action shooter that offers approachable yet addictive game play. It has taken a bit longer to get the artwork and programming finished than we’d expected, however I’d rather take flack for releasing the product late than take flack for releasing a sub-standard or rushed game. Look for Apeiron in November, and keep your mouse in good repair.
• Easy Envelopes Plus. This venerable title is long overdue for an update. Our plans were to have “Cajun” David Richard work on the update—called Easy Envelopes Pro—however learning programming on the Mac and handling full time technical support is no small feat. As soon as Apeiron is completed, I plan to begin implementing the design we’ve settled on for the update. Expect cool things.
• To Do! is another older product that has been eclipsed by many products in terms of functionality, but its simplicity is a virtue it retains. Right after Easy Envelopes Pro, To Do! will be getting a major face-lift. Our goal is to keep the simplicity while beefing up the features To Do! offers.
• FlashWrite ][. We’ve got major plans for this handy note pad, which will be put into effect after To Do! is updated. Again we will be striving to keep the simplicity while adding features you folks have requested, and of course putting our own patented Ambrosia spin on the product.
If anyone has any suggestions for Easy Envelopes, To Do!, or FlashWrite, please feel free to let us know. We maintain a database of suggestions for our products, and give them a hard look over when we are planning an update.
• PowerPC. We here at Ambrosia are anxious to get moving on PowerPC-native programs; the only thing standing in our way is that we don’t have a PowerPC Macintosh yet. Our plans are to get one in November, and to take a look at making some of our programs native while concurrently working on new versions of the aforementioned program.
We don’t plan to make every program native. All of our games are written in such a way that they run quite fast emulated, and thus would not benefit from being native. We write our games so that they will run well on lower-end machines like the Mac IIsi, and therefor they run quite speedily under PowerPC emulation. We may however look into making PowerPC-only games that really take advantage of the available horsepower.
Snapz is another program that, at this time, would not benefit by being native: the parts of the OS that Snapz patches itself into are themselves emulated, and thus making Snapz native would actually cause it to be slower because of all the context switches.
Eclipse is one program that absolutely needs to be native, and that will likely be the first PowerPC project we embark upon. Other programs like Easy Envelopes, To Do, FlashWrite, etc. would benefit by being native, so we plan on making the upgrades “Fat” applications (both PowerPC and 68000 code in them).
We just need a few more registrations to roll in so we can purchase our PowerPC development machine. :)
• Other Authors. We are also working to pick up quality shareware titles from other authors and bring them to you under our masthead. The reason for this is that we have the facilities in place to offer first-class product support, allowing developers to concentrate on updating and enhancing their titles. The net result is benefit to everyone, including of course you folks.
But don’t worry; we only plan to pick up quality titles, and are being quite discriminating in that regard.
Well I hope that gives everyone something to look forward to. Until next time...
