software company hyperion solutions . hyperion entertainment type private industry computer software founded february 1999 headquarters brussels belgium key people ben yoris benjamin hermans timothy de groote evert carton products amigaos 4 website www.hyperion entertainment.biz hyperion entertainment cvba formerly hyperion entertainment vof is a belgian software company which in its early years focused in porting windows games to amiga os linux and mac os . in 2001 they accepted a contract by amiga incorporated to develop amigaos 4 and mainly discontinued their porting business to pursue this development . amigaos 4 runs on the amigaone systems commodore amiga systems with a phase5 powerup accelerator board pegasos ii systems and sam440 sam460 systems . contents 1 history 1.1 game development 1.2 amigaos 4 1.3 insolvency declaration of 2015 2 games 3 references 4 external links history edit hyperion entertainment was founded in february 1999 in their own words after belgian lawyer benjamin hermans wondered why no one had ever tried to license pc games to do amiga ports . hyperion does not maintain programmer staff but sub contracts software programmers for projects as necessary . hans joerg frieden who had previously worked on ports of the games descent and abuse as well as the warp3d library was contracted to be hyperion s main developer . for the next few years hyperion would port several game titles to the amiga and later linux and the macintosh starting with heretic ii . 1 game development edit the port of heretic ii was generally well received by the amiga press but had weak sales . following this hyperion set out to target a broader range of platforms amiga linux and mac os . they also approached monolith productions to port their lithtech engine culminating in their port of shogo mobile armor division in 2001 . 2 3 the game had not sold as well as had been hoped most notably on linux despite becoming a best seller on tux games . hyperion put some of the blame for weak sales on lack of publication by its then publisher titan computer a claim bitterly contested by titan 4 and also stated that linux users were likely to dual boot with windows to play easily available games rather than purchase more expensive specialised versions years after release . 5 in any case hyperion then mainly discontinued licensing and porting games as it was not profitable as hermans had claimed . a linux port of gorky 17 contracted by hyperion to steffen haeusser was published by linux game publishing in 2006 . 6 they also marketed a commercial amiga port of quake ii which was already available as source code under the gnu public license . descent freespace the great war in 2010 was ported to amigaos 4 by peter gordon around ten years after it was ported to amigaos 3 by hyperion entertainment contractors . 7 amigaos 4 edit see also history of the amigaos 4 dispute in 2001 hyperion announced that after licensing the rights from amiga inc it would be working on the long awaited successor to amigaos 3.9 and to this end concentrated most of its effort on the development of amigaos 4 . hyperion claimed and still claim that it is based upon amigaos 3.1 source code and to a lesser extent certain amigaos 3.9 sources . a quick port of 68k amigaos to powerpc was originally planned with new features added as development continued . ben hermans writing on amiga forum ann.lu claimed that these sources along with the source of the ppc kernel warpos would be sufficient to provide a version to users within a year making his now infamous change some flags and recompile comment . citation needed amigaos 4.0 was first released to end users and second level betatesters in april 2004 with amigaos 4.1 following in september 2008 . it is currently still in development . 8 the first managing partner of hyperion benjamin hermans in the period between announcement and release of amigaos 4 ignited a great deal of community controversy by repeatedly claiming that morphos an amigaos like competitor which had been released in complete form in 2003 was illegal and had on several occasions threatened to take legal action against it either on the grounds that it was parasitic competition to amigaos 4 9 or even that it was actually based on stolen amigaos source code . 10 no evidence to support either claim ever became public neither did any legal action against morphos take place although neither prevented such views being repeated commonly in public amiga forums and mailing lists and even accepted as fact by some . this situation was inflamed by ex commodore engineer dave haynie who backed up herman s claims if you have seen the amiga source code you can not produce a legally separate work alike 11 though again without any direct evidence . the dispute did not enter the courts but in the forums the argument was bitter . hermans claimed that bill buck leading the genesi company funding morphos was a con artist . 12 evert carton took over the managing partner position after benjamin hermans stepped down in mid 2003 for unstated reasons . citation needed in 2007 hyperion were sued by amiga incorporated for trademark infringement in the washington western district court in seattle us . 13 amiga inc. sued hyperion for breach of contract trademark violation and copyright infringement concerning the development and marketing of amigaos 4.0 stating that hyperion had continued to develop and market amigaos 4 without paying agreed royalties and had continued to do so even after warned to cease and desist . hyperion launched a counter action claiming fraud in amiga inc. handling of amiga intellectual properties and debts including the use of debt holding shell companies by shifting responsibility between these shell companies . they also claimed that amiga inc. had failed to uphold their part of the contract and had been untruthful in correspondence ; and that they had failed to deliver the amigaos 3.1 source that amigaos 4 was developed from forcing hyperion to find it elsewhere . in defiance of that ongoing legal dispute in late september 2007 hyperion published distributed and marketed a standalone version of amigaos 4 for classic amiga an action amiga inc. claimed as illegal . 14 15 on may 29 2007 the new managing partner stated under oath without further evidence that the open source amigaos reimplementation aros was probably illegal as documented on page 27 of court documents related to the amiga hyperion court case . 16 on 30 september 2009 hyperion and amiga inc reached settlement . hyperion were granted an exclusive right to develop and market amigaos 4 and subsequent versions with the name amigaos . 17 however the amiga trademark remained with amiga inc. and was then also sold to other parties including commodore usa and icontain . this meant that amiga branded hardware could and would be sold without amigaos 4 . 18 on april 24 2011 evert carton announced stepping down as the managing partner of hyperion . 19 since the departure of evert carton the current management of hyperion was again benjamin hermans . mr. hermans was replaced after march 2015 . citation needed insolvency declaration of 2015 edit on january 27 2015 hyperion entertainment was declared insolvent . 20 ben hermans has claimed that this was an administrative mistake by a third party and that the company would appeal the insolvency decision . 21 the declarion was overturned on 2 april 2015 22 and the company posted clarification on its website . 23 shortly after the insolvency was annulled benjamin hermans was replaced as leading the company . citation needed games edit hyperion s game ports include these heretic ii shogo mobile armor division gorky 17 quake ii sin and descent freespace the great war . on their official website hyperion also claimed to have acquired the license to port worms armageddon but it was never released by hyperion as neither was an amiga port of sin they also claimed to have been working on . references edit interviews hans joerg frieden . digital amiga dream . archived from the original on august 19 2011 . retrieved 2011 06 06 . lithtech 3d linux port . linuxgames . retrieved 2011 06 06 . monolith adds games for linux . slashdot . retrieved 2011 06 06 . interview titan computer . amiga.org . 2002 10 27 . retrieved 2013 09 16 . a.t. hun s haus of shogo interview with hyperion s ben hermans . thehaus.net . archived from the original on 18 october 2007 . gorky 17 . phoronix . retrieved 2011 06 06 . freespace updated to amigaos 4.1 amiga ng . retrieved 2011 06 06 . hyperion amigaos 4 development timeline . ben hermans on ann.lu challenged on suing morphos . let s find out . . ben hermans ann.lu . morphos people are using os3 .1 source codes it s a known fact . . haynie morphos code is stolen . ben hermans claiming bill buck is the con artist . retrieved 2010 09 03 . amiga inc v. hyperion vof justia dockets & filings . dockets.justia.com . retrieved 2013 09 16 . amiga inc sues hyperion vof . amiganet.net . 2007 05 01 . retrieved 2007 05 02 . hyperion s official statement http merlancia.us amiga hyperion 35 5decmcewenexhibit5show case doc.pdf hyperion amiga inc. settlement . . osnews . 2009 10 17 . retrieved 2009 10 18 . 1 archived march 6 2012 at the wayback machine . announcement goodbye to all . amigaworld.net . 2011 04 24 . retrieved 2011 04 24 . bankruptcy hyperion entertainment cvba in sint agatha berchem 466380552 . www.faillissementsdossier.be . 2015 01 27 . retrieved 2015 02 14 . david doyle . amigaworld.net the amiga computer community portal website . amigaworld.net . enterprise data cbe public search . www.kbopub.economie.fgov.be . 2015 04 02 . retrieved 2015 04 04 . clarification of current situation . hyperion entertainment . 2015 04 12 . retrieved 2015 04 25 . external links edit amiga portal amigaos official website hyperion entertainment website company blog company forum 2000 interview with hyperion s hans joerg frieden at the wayback machine archived august 19 2011 2001 interview with hyperion s ben hermans . archived from the original on october 10 2008 . retrieved october 10 2008 . cs1 maint unfit url link 2000 interview with hyperion s thomas frieden . archived from the original on october 10 2008 . retrieved october 10 2008 . cs1 maint unfit url link v t e amiga companies property owner amiga inc. original developer amiga corporation mainly hardware acube systems srl a eon technology genesi great valley products newtek mainly software hyperion entertainment metacomco other companies former amiga inc. south dakota commodore international escom eyetech gateway inc. phase5 xetec v t e amigaos 4 powerpc main companies amiga inc. hyperion entertainment acube systems compatible hardware a12001 a30001 a3000t1 a3000ux1 a40001 a4000t1 amigaone se amigaone xe micro a1 pegasos ii sam440ep sam440ep flex sam460ex sam460ex lite amigaone x1000 os4 software amuse aladdin4d blender hollywood megazeux netsurf origyn web browser timberwolf yam more ... os4 games abuse aquaria the battle for wesnoth cave story gorky 17 lincity lugaru monkey island 3 quake ii stratagus warcraft ii more ... technologies amigados amigaguide arexx the grim reaper ram disk reaction gui exec warpos workbench related and historical amiga amigaos amiga history the amigaos 4 dispute amiga forever intuition models and variants kickstart more ... 1powerpc accelerator board required v t e amigaos amiga technologies amigabasic amigados amigaguide arexx blitter object exec warpos guru meditation hunk intuition kickstart ram disk workbench xad amiga guis ambient mui reaction scalos wanderer workbench zune file systems crossdos ofs ffs pfs sfs udf jxfs fat ntfs os versions 68k based 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 beta 2.0 2.04 2.05 2.1 3.0 3.1 3.5 3.9 powerpc based 4.0 4.1 software packs amiga forever amikit