How LSD Got Involved
This story has started as far as I remember when we first talked about our demo. That time my friend LSD didn't know a thing about demoscene. We said we were demomakers and he replied we were "der'momakers" ("der'mo" in Russian means "shit"). Of course this was just a joke. So, we continued making our intro, and he continued laughing at us. I tried to tell him some things about scene. Then we talked to him about Hugi. I said I was translating Hugi and the first thing he asked was "How much will they pay?" This is a normal reaction for people who are not sceners.
Time passed, almost half a year passed. We were waiting for Hugi#24 Russian edition to arrive. So, one day Elmm had finally downloaded the issue and brought it to me on floppies. I told LSD: "I've got a new Hugi here, would you like to have a look?" So, I put floppies into his hand and he said he'd have a look.
The next day began like this: "WOOOOOOW!!!!!!!! HUGI RULEEEEEZZZZ!!!!" - LSD came into the classroom and started expressing his feelings about what he saw. He said: "I thought your Hugi is just a piece of HTML, but it is SOOOO GOOOD! I liked design very much! I liked music even more! I even left Hugi running when I went to sleep just to hear this music!"
And the next day: "This is some kind of a sabotage! When I come home all I want to do is read Hugi! Yesterday I was reading one article about Africa and even started to think It got there by mistake, but then I found one about plasmas and so on. I liked it very much and even sat down and made my own plasma! Wow! I've made my first demo!"
He found "stash" and "jizz" intros on one of my disks. And the next week he was telling me "Wow! Have you seen those water effects?" (metaballs) and things like this. Then I gave him fr08. I think he was shocked. Till now he often replies "1.9G to 64k! 30000 packing coefficient! Those Germans are the best!"
As we were making an intro he asked for sources. First I didn't want to give it to him. But then changed my mind. It was interesting to hear what he told about those "no-comments" sources of our engine: "Hmmm, it's interesting! Like some kind of your own DirectX!". It's a pity he didn't make his part till the party's deadline.
And finally he saw me translating Hugi#25 articles and asked if he could also help. So now he also translates Hugi! He's now very interested in scene. We'll maybe even start writing a demo engine together. He had even started a "demoscene advertisement company". One by one people of our office got shown fr08 or fr19 with his comments on the background. Seems like everyone who had seen those already has one on his HDD. Not bad as for the day they learned about demoscene ;)
PS: I just wanted to say that if you know a good programmer / designer / any who is potentially a good scener, you could try giving him Hugi or other e-mag to read, some demos to watch or some scene-made music to listen. This can become some kind of a catalyst for him to join the scene. And we all know that newcomers with fresh ideas always push the scene further!
24may2002
Makeevka, Ukraine