Exclusive: Amiga Flame Interview With Sofia Tsiotsikas of ClickBOOM

This week, Amiga Flame continues on with its series of interviews with the major players in the Amiga Games Market. It seems only right to interview Sofia Tsiotsikas of ClickBOOM for in recent days ClickBOOM has released Napalm, the first C&C style game for the Amiga and announced their first non-game product, The Portal. 1. 1998 seemed like a pretty good year for ClickBOOM, the conversion of Quake won many awards amongst the Amiga Press and voted "Best Game Of 1998" by Amiga Flame readers, Myst became the Number 1 selling game even though it was released in 1997, and the announcement that ClickBOOM were developing their next original game Napalm, received wide spread support. From your own viewpoint was 1998 an impressive year for ClickBOOM? Sure it was impressive! :) More importantly, it seems that each year it keeps getting better. And most importantly, 1999 will be even better.

2. Napalm has just been released in the last few days. There are a number of C&C style games in the making what features do you think will make Napalm stand out from the rest? Being the best will probably make it stand out from the rest. :) Jokes aside, we have not yet seen demos of other Amiga real-time-strategy games, so I can't truly compare Napalm to any one of them. Once they are released it will be more obvious what their strengths/flaws are. This said, I doubt any one of them will be serious competitors to Napalm, purely because Napalm has many, many, many strengths: playability, gfx, great code, various missions, etc. It's a very big game. Amiga hasn't seen an original Amiga game of this size in a very long time.

3. Will ClickBOOM continue to support Napalm through Data disks, in the same way as C&C has had so many excellent add-ons? Technically there are no problems to have extra missions and various add-ons. Provided Napalm sells reasonably well we would have those extra missions released in the following months. Napalm contains a great engine, and that's the most important base for further development. Judging by the early response during these first few days after the release Napalm is set to become an Amiga strategy standard, and so we are confident more missions will be needed. The actual contents of those missions are yet to be determined. However, one thing is sure, due to the overall size of the game, it would not be an Internet download, it would have to fit on a separate CD. Pricewise, an add-ons would cost less than a full game, and would cost even less for registered users, so make sure you register your copy of Napalm as soon as you get it. And last, but certainly not least, is our wish to have an official guide to Napalm -- a printed booklet that would discuss various techniques, all the missions, etc. It still might be too early to talk about this, but if there are avid Napalm players out there with good writing skills who would be interested in writing such a guide, we'd like to hear from them.

4. ClickBOOM have announced their first non-game product called The Portal. What is the Portal, then and why did you decide to create The Portal? Explaining what's Portal is more complex than using it, that's for sure. :) The Portal is something brand new on Amiga. Not only that, only a few of the biggest Net sites have anything similar. Basically, The Portal is a service. It's envisioned as a starting point for one's Amiga Net surf. The Portal is not a web site per se, it's a database which prepares it's content based on who the visitor is. Let me give you an example. Once you log in with your name and password, The Portal pulls your data file from the online database, and it sees that you have registered Napalm. It then shows you a Napalm-related page that is not accessible by users who haven't registered Napalm! Cheats, hints, and tips would be a great example. Moreover, it contains a database of Amiga-related news sites, including Amiga Flame of course. All of the sites are listed on one simple chronologically sorted page. But, instead of just listing sites, the latest headlines from those sites and links to the stories are presented to the user. Moreover, a user can select which 3 news sites will appear at the top of the page all the time (preferred News sites). For example, a user likes Amiga Flame and visits it often. Instead of having to go to Amiga Flame site every day not knowing if it was updated or not, he can simply select it as a preferred News site, and so whenever he uses The Portal he will see when Amiga Flame has been updated and what the headlines are. With just one click he is taken directly to the Amiga Flame story! The most important fact about this section of The Portal is that it's not being run by clickBOOM, but by site owners themselves. So, clickBOOM will not choose what Amiga Flame section will show, it's the actual Amiga Flames headlines appearing there. It was very important to establish right from the start the fact that although The Portal is made by clickBOOM, it is something completely separate. It is time for us to spread our online presence to a new dimension, not even observed before by anyone else. Then, there are Auctions, the one and only on Amiga. Very simple, yet very high-tech, fully automatic and private Auction place is being ran from The Portal. Any Amiga user can bid or hold an auction to sell new or old hardware/software.

5. It sounds a bit like Babylon 5, a place for trading and selling, chat and news. Do you think The Portal will become a centre for Amiga Gamers receiving regular visitors? You are right that it sounds futuristic, and it is, because it is much more advanced than the regular web site. It is clickBOOM's intention to push Portal as The place for Amiga Gamers, and we are confident we will do it because of its quality and options that are still to be revealed. We feel Amiga is lacking a coherent online presence, and The Portal has the potential to change that. Amiga community is very strong, yet we felt that it was not being addressed properly in terms of Internet, because pieces of information were very dispersed. Internet is the future, and clickBOOM is preparing to bring it much close to Amiga users.

6. On the gaming front what can we expect to see from ClickBOOM in 1999? Will ClickBOOM be soon making Amiga NG games? We have no news on Amiga NG progress, so it's impossible to say when and if we will support it. Once the platform is created and known, it will be easier to make a judgment. In '99 clickBOOM will of course have several new games, some conversions, some brand new Amiga developments. We will announce a brand new Amiga game later this month (you may have seen teasers for it on our site). We'll continue creating great software, and our intention for '99 is to step up the production and make our online presence even stronger. Sofia Tsiotsikas I would like to take this opportunity to thank Sofia Tsiotsikas of ClickBOOM for taking the time-out to answer these questions. Amiga Flame will hopefully have another Exclusive interview ready in a few weeks. If you're interested in purchasing Napalm, then e-mail ClickBOOM at:- infoclickboom.com Visit their web site at :- ClickBOOM PXL Computers

E-mail - philip amigaflame.co.uk

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