Interview with the Developer of Inviyya for OCS Amiga

The Amiga community is full of creative Amigans doing lot’s of stuff for the Amiga. Now the oldest Amiga home computers will get a New shooter very soon. I wanted to know more about the author behind Inviyya for OCS Amiga home computers. All of the shots and videos look really nice.

So, here are my questions from one Mike to another Mike. Read all of his answers below.

Questions and Answers with Inviyya Developer

Introduce yourself please. Who are you? What do you do?

My name is Michael Borrmann, living in Munich in Germany since a very early age.

Who made you aware of the Amiga computer back in the days?

I think I read about the Amiga on the cover of a computer magazine called “Happy Computer” back in 1985. It said something like “this will be Commodores new dream machine” or something like that.

Tell us about your connection with the Amiga computer? Where did it all begin?

The Amiga was all the rage around us C64 kiddies back then. At that time in early 1987, we had a kind of small computer department store called “COM Computers” here in Munich, which was also the meeting point of the local cracking and demo scene. I went there every Saturday, for getting to know and meeting other Amiga fans. Some “copying stuff” went on there as well.. ?

What inspires you about developing for Amiga?

The Amiga was the dream machine of my youth. That computer that promised you the future.
Also, the friends I have made during my Amiga time and the Amiga itself pulled me through some very rough patch in my life in summer 1988. So I will always have some kind of emotional connection with that little computer.

Please tell us a bit about what you have made in the past and what are you most proud of?

I have coded some stuff on the Vectrex, a game called “Vec Fu” and a little break out clone called “Blocks”. I coded some prototype of “Bomb Jack” for the Atari 2600 and a little Kung Fu game for the C64 which is called “Oolong”. Everything in ASM.

My day job for over the last ten years is working as a C# coder for POS systems, usually for some automotive client.

About Inviyya for Amiga

How did you come up with such an inspiring title as Inviyya?

I was just searching for a unique word. And at that time I searched for a new Bluetooth box, and the best small one at that time was the “Denon Envaya”. I thought that “Envaya” sounded a bit spacey, so I changed that a bit and the name “Inviyya” was born.

Why supporting Amiga in 2019? What made you decide to make a game for the platform?

I have always been an Amiga fan, but for a long time, I felt it was too complicated a machine to make a game for it. In my opinion, to properly code for the Amiga, you need to know a lot more than for instance for the C64. But a couple of years ago I finally took the plunge into fully learning the Amigas chipset and 68k assembler.

Can you reveal a bit about what the plot of the game if there will be one?

There will be no real plot.
Evil aliens attack earth, you are the defense force. The usual.. ?

What features can the player expect to have when the game is out? What sort of requirements will the game need?

3 layer parallax scrolling, 16 colors, 50 fps action (with a very few slowdowns here and there), 2 extra weapons, saving high score on disk, 5 levels, nice music by Triace and SFX playing as well. Minimum config you will need for playing Inviyya is a vanilla PAL Amiga 500 with an additional 512k of slow, fast or chip RAM.

Inviyya Development

What did you use for creating the graphics in Inviyya?

I usually use Gimp. And a couple of special tools that I coded myself to get the resulting graphics into an interleaved format for the Amiga.

The music in the demo that we’ve played is intense which is great. Will the music change between the levels?

Yes, every level has its own music.

What sort of developing tools did you use?

I am developing on Mac OS X. I use Visual Studio Code, FS-UAE, which is normally chained to a serial debug output in some shell window.

For assembling I use VASM.

Anything that you want to reveal for Amitopia Amiga Magazine which is not told about to anyone about Inviyya?

I hated coding the hi-score table. Everything about it.

What sort of Amiga computers do you have for developing Inviyya?

I regularly test on an Amiga 1200, Amiga 500, Amiga 600 and Amiga 1000.

Will you release Inviyya for nextgen Amiga systems such as AmigaOS 4, MorphOS and AROS?

Definitely not. I think classic 68k is where it’s at.
To each their own, though…
Guess those guys with these systems can play the game through emulators anyway…

Questions about the Amiga situation

Where do you think that Amiga is going in the next 10 years?

More and more developments for classic Amigas. Hopefully, we will see an Apollo Core 68080 ASIC being created.

Many more games, since a few great engines, are around now, like McGeezers Rygar engine, Alex Browns Metro Siege engine, and Ritchie Löwensteins Reshoot-R engine. Also Earoks amazing Scorpion engine.

I think we will see a lot of new Amiga games showing in the next two years. There might be releases of big and well-made games every two months or even more. Like on the C64 at the moment.

Who do you think should be the owner of Amiga rights? And what should that one focus on?

I don’t care who, but I’d love that person to get together with all the other players in the classic area, and get stuff out that’s good for the platform.

I’d love to see an Amiga branded Vampire for instance.

What do you think of the Vampire Amiga accelerators? Will Inviyya run on 68080 FPGA core?

I am a huge fan of these. Unfortunately, when I wanted to buy one, they announced the V4, and since then I have been waiting.

I don’t have any idea if the game runs on a Vampire. Maybe I will send the game to Gunnar to try out.. ?

Any last comments for the Amiga community? Or anything that you want to add?

I think we have an amazing momentum right now with all the classic stuff going on. Amazing new hardware, new cases, new keyboards with new keycaps, new games, even new OS versions..
Everybody should add his own little thing to keep the momentum going..

Amiga forever!

End of the Interview

We at Amitopia Amiga Magazine wishes Inviyya developer all the best for finishing this game. Michael sent us an early version of the game and what I can say so far is that this game will be an awesome shooter with an awesome name for it. The fact that it runs on our Amiga 1200 with AmigaOS 3.1.4 is a proof that Inviyya which is made for OCS Amiga’s will work on any Classic Amiga with 1MB RAM or more. This Amiga shooter will for sure be loved. The graphics, gameplay, in-game music and sound effects really show that the developer loves what he is doing.

The final verdict of Inviyya will come once the game is complete. Until that time. Amigans have something to look forward. Together with Metro Siege and Rygar AGA. It’s great to see so many new games in development. Amiga users really know how to show what they are passionate about and Michael which develops Inviyya shows his passion for Inviyya. And that will lead to success for him. Our goal is to try and help anyone in the Amiga community.

Inviyya is in our hearts now. And soon it will be in yours too.