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A propos d'Obligement
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David Brunet
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Interview with Steffen Häuser
(Interview conducted by David Brunet - July 2025)
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Steffen Häuser is best known to the Amiga community for having developed or participated in the development of
some great games for Hyperion (Descent Freespace, Heretic 2, Quake 2...). This German developer, notably active
on AmigaOS 4, has made a comeback after a short break and tells us about his current projects.
 Hello Steffen. Can
you introduce yourself to our readers?
My name is Steffen Häuser (on the Amiga Community, always going by my old BBS time handle "MagicSN"), I am
53 years old and a Studied computer scientist. I am married since 11 years. I work for Bosch and my
employer allowed me to have a side-job to do games for AmigaOS. Asides from computer stuff, my hobbies include
Tabletop RPG and Genealogy.
When and how
did you discover the Amiga?
I heard first about the Amiga from a computer Magazine before it came out which compared Atari ST,
Amiga 1000, Sinclair QL, etc. decades ago, and from a presentation at a local computer show at Stuttgart.
What is your
current Amiga configuration? What do you do with your Amiga?
My main Amiga is my AmigaOne x1000. For AmigaOS 3.x 68k, I have an A1200 with PiStorm, a Pi5+AmiKit
and a Vampire (A1200 and Vampire loaned by Alinea Computer).
Can you tell
us about your hiring at Hyperion, more than 25 years ago? Was it a dream to work for an Amiga company?
Yes it was. I "fled" a job at a very badly managed company where I was doing business software.
I had much hopes on Amiga getting big again. I left Hyperion then (I think around 2007 or something?)
due to monetary issues. Note I was never an employee of Hyperion. I was an independent contractor.
Were you well
paid at Hyperion Entertainment? Why did you leave this job?
The money was not high. But not the fault of Hyperion. The Amiga market back then was collapsing,
after the Commodore bankruptcy (we were all surprised that other companies went to PC instead of
supporting the products of companies like Phase 5 and H&P - but that was not what happened).
You took a
long break of more than ten years on the Amiga scene. What motivated your return?
That is due to Arkadiusz Hucko. He talked me into it and asked me about fixing Heretic 2 for AmigaOS 4
(he gave me a 3D Card as a present). I checked my old backup drive for the source code of the WarpOS version,
got my AmigaOne x1000 running again. Then I contacted Ben Hermans and asked if me doing an AmigaOS 4 version
would be possible. It turned out I ran in open doors.
Did you have news about Ben Hermans?
Have you had any contact with Timothy de Groote, Hyperion's current director?
I am working together with Timothy de Groote and I think he leads Hyperion in a good direction. I also work
together with Ben Hermans on projects and I keep in contact. We also have common projects like Python 2.7
for AmigaOS 3.2 which he finances. I count him as a long year friend - don't believe all the bullshit
told about him online. I would prefer the two could work together again.
You've been
busy over the last two years with new versions of Heretic 2, Quake 2, Gorky 17... Did Hyperion ask you to
make these ports or was it your own initiative?
It was my initiative.
I imagine
that this kind of developments/ports is easier now than in 2000-2005. What tools and hardware do you use
for development?
Well, I have a faster PC. Back then, I compiled Heretic 2 on a 486 machine, now on a i7 machine. Yes, it's cross compilation.
Not having to reboot your development machine when your test machine crashes is a huge advantage. Also,
AmigaOS 4 is a huge advantage. With The Grim Reaper, if something crashes, I know where. Even if a project
would be targeted for 68k mainly, I would first do a AmigaOS 4 Version and then backport to 68k. When
I did Heretic 2 for WarpOS, AmigaOS 4 was not available, so debugging was more complicated. But Heretic 2
WarpOS also was compiled on a PC.
Are ports
of the action game Sin and the racing game Midnight Racing also planned? Are the licences still valid?
sin: without me, there would be no Amiga licence, so I can say yes, it will happen. I started the discussion
with the Copyright owner a few years ago (2023 I think?) and got then Ben Hermans involved to do contract
negotiation. I had the habit of all my "outside Amiga" games stuff to demand an Amiga
licence to work for them. That was why there is a Midnight Racing licence. The game would be very hard to port.
Licence not broken but rights owner is bankrupt. And as I said, it would be no easy port, as it is using
massive Windows code. Probably easier to do other titles. I doubt Midnight Racing will happen. Sin definitely
will happen.
Your recent
ports also include versions for WarpOS. This system seems to have been depreciated in favour of AmigaOS 4
or MorphOS, so why continue to support it?
The reasons are the PCI PowerPC boards and a friendship to Dennis van der Boon, who sort of is "Mr. WarpOS" now. Still, the
possibility of future WarpOS ports would be higher if WarpOS people bought more of my stuff. WarpOS
though also gives me a possibility to Support MorphOS users. Of course, for open source stuff, I
am doing like RetroArch a MorphOS version (and I have a working MorphOS beta version there, asides from
AmigaOS 4, WarpOS and 68k betas). Remember though, those PCI PowerPC boards cannot run either AmigaOS 4
or MorphOS. They can only run WarpOS. I can tell you several people were very happy that I started supporting WarpOS.
You have
announced the port of RetroArch. Can you remind us what this is? Do you intend to carry out a complete port
with all the cores?
Not just announced. I provided a nearly finished beta version. RetroArch is a modular emulation system. The
idea is that for an emulator you do not have to develop video code, sound code, joystick code all the time.
That's all in the central application. Only CPU emulation needs to be done. Much easier for emulator authors
(and also it is much easier to port a core than a complete emulator). Also, you get a common GUI for all
emulations and can start all emulated games from the same place. Also, the system uses high-end coding
technology like multithreading leading it to results like that on WarpOS, for example, a standalone SNES
emulation is 30 fps - RetroArch is 50 fps. RetroArch offers stuff like Game Boy, NES, SNES, Neo-Geo, Sega,
MAME, NeoGeoCD, Mega Drive CD, whatever. For 15 euros to my Paypal (tirionareonwe@gmail.com) you get access
to all beta versions. Final version will be a free download.
Some videos:
Do you have
any other porting projects for the Amiga? Are you still contributing to the development of AmigaOS 4 (AmigaInput, etc.)?
I am not involved in the development of AmigaOS 4 right now. My current projects are RetroArch, GemRB 68k,
Sin and another "big title" (commercial game port).
What is your
opinion on AmigaOS 4 machine such as the A1222?
For A1222, I think what is needed here is an at least minimal "complete SPE" linker library. Software developers
should not get the blame for this. It is not a simple recompile (and adaptions might work for certain products,
for others, they would be very hard to do).
And your
opinion about the future Mirari?
Mirari is very positive. I hope we will soon get news on AmigaOS 4 Support. But my contacts tell me this
should not be a major issue.
What do you
think of the relaunch of AmigaOS 68k development with versions 3.2+?
Well, as I am the one who convinced Hyperion of doing 68k versions of Heretic 2 and Gorky 17 as well as
the project manager of PiStorm 3D, so obviously I am positive on these developments. My games will
typically need something faster than a 68060 though (like a PiStorm or Vampire or Pi5+AmiKit - for some
of the games like Heretic 2, a Vampire is not even enough). I do not decide "I want to port x for y".
I decide "I want to port x" - and then, I see on what systems it can reasonably run. Very often this
ends up being AmigaOS 4, PiStorm and Pi5+AmiKit though. Sometimes WarpOS, sometimes Vampire added to
the list. Sometimes A1222.
You also own a
Vampire V4 on loan from Apollo Computer. What do you think of the Apollo Vampire project as a whole?
In your opinion, are these cards powerful enough to "revive the Amiga"?
Actually, I don't. Not anymore at least. I used to but that hardware was asked back by Apollo Computer
after I started supporting PiStorm (and publicly suggested I could help them with an AmigaOS 4 and a
PiStorm port of Robin Hood, maybe this offer was misunderstood). Anyways, I now have a Vampire V4
loaned by Alinea, so I still can support it. My opinion on the platform - it is the lowest end of
the high-end Amigas.
As I said, I do not do "ideological support" of platforms. I start on an AmigaOS 4
version and, after that, try to port over to other Amigaoid platforms and see what is fast enough then.
For Heretic 2, the Vampire was too slow (probably the same for Sin), for Gorky 17 and Quake 2, it worked.
I suspect for GemRB it will also work, but I cannot tell so 100% yet. Basically as to speed, we have:
AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS >= Pi5+AmiKit >> PiStorm 4 >> PiStorm 3 >> Vampire V4 > 100 MHz 68060 >> everything else.
As an AmigaOS 4
developer, what did you think of the sparring between AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS supporters? Is it still present today?
My position has shifted a lot here since 25 years back. I am of course like back then clearly on the AmigaOS 4
side but I think people on all "camps" need to work together. And actually, developers do this already a lot.
For example, I had some valuable help on GemRB by CowCat, and also had some friendly chats with BeWorld (regarding ScummVM)
and Frank Mariak recently. If anyone is continuing on "system wars", it is not developers, in my impression.
Still, a MorphOS version of commercial ports has the issue - licence for AmigaOS and MorphOS == double licence
cost. WarpOS versions are a bit a hack here, as they are AmigaOS versions but also run on MorphOS. And as I
mentioned above, if I do a WarpOS version on something, it will definitely get testing on a "real MorphOS system"
before release (on Gorky17, we still had some issues with the MorphOS installer there, on RetroArch it installs
without any trickery needed on installer-side). Usually WarpOS versions I do run fine on MorphOS systems and
on PCI PowerPC G3/G4 systems (BlizzardPPC/CyberStormPPC often is too slow).
Thank you
Steffen for your answers and good luck with your projects!
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