Interview with Kalms

Cremax/Nothing

An interview that was made for Hugi #11 but wasn't published due to the already high number of interviews. The last interview with the fixed set of questions.

Can you tell us about you and your group?

Me, I'm Kalms / C-Lous, Appendix & TBL. Mostly Amigans there, I guess it's cause I so far haven't had any real reason to convert to fulltime PC programming yet.

What do you think about the progress nowadays in the demoscene?

It's going in the fairly right direction - people DO concentrate more on design nowadays, and that's the main thing to me; the days of brute effects without any touch of style is over (notice that I don't say that new or improved effects are worthless - I'm only slagging anyone who happens to be boasting a purely technical innovation in a demo, where it doesn't really add much to the effect in terms of appearance). Of course, there is still room for improvement :) It won't help a tiny little bit if I keep nagging about 'the good old times', but you readers may insert such nags after every tenth sentence in this interview :)

Do you think 3D is making a better scene or boring one?

Do you have a better suggestion as to what we should be doing with our millions of clock cycles? :)

What do you think about making demos under windows?

The OS doesn't really matter to me. Hardware acceleration neither; it's the end result that counts. (Don't think that it's any easier under Windows btw... under DOS you have a plethora of graphics cards which cause countless trouble with VESA. Under Windows you have to fight with all the different 2d and 3d accelerators which all have different sets of features and bugs...)

What platform you think supports the demoscene better? Do you think DOS will survive?

The best platform for the demoscene would IMHO be the one that enabled as many sceners (and non-sceners!) to both create and watch the demos. In my ears, this sounds like Windows.

What you think about hardware "support" on demos?

Hopefully people will learn that hardware acceleration isn't mutually exclusive with afterthought and style :)

Which is/was your favourite party (if you attended one)?

Ah, that's probably the first big party I attended - TP94. It was simply brilliant, back then the competition contributions were simply incredible, and the atmosphere when 2000+ people are roaring lodly at the killer effects (well, they were back then at least :) is more than I can put into words!

What is your favourite demo?

Sanity's "Interference" from 92-93 sometime! One of the two demos Sanity did with real stylee :) Virtual Dreams' Psychedelic from TP4 is also a killer. Heck, all the demos from back then are :)

Would you want to contribute to the demoscene with anything?

I've more or less given my share by now, I think. (Mainly to the Amiga scene...) I might make small contributions to different projects, but I doubt it will ever be anything dead serious again.

What do you think about diskmags?

Diskmags? "Oh, they're nice" sortof :) I enjoy reading them when I stumble across them, but I don't keep record of them.

Are diskmags still necessary?

I doubt that, but they nevertheless add a nice flavor to the scene :)

What do you think about other media like irc, newsgroups, online-mags?

Those medias have taken the role of the traditional diskmags, and they are also the means of communications which ties the scene of today together. Without them, the scene would evolve VERY slowly. (God knows if it even would exist...)

What groups do you consider "well-known" and in some way contributed to the scene?

They are almost countless (just a sorry excuse for having a bad memory), I'd say "any which has released something that has been fairly widespread", be it demos, diskmags, tutorials or whatever. Future Crew, Orange, Pulse, TPOLM, Doomsday, Asphyxia and OTM are the ones I first come to think of.

When do you think to release a new demo from your group? (we would like to know :)

Hopefully this year - and that's a wild guess.

One last question, what are your favourite music bands? ;)

I haven't quite decided on that yet :) Normally I listen to either techno/goa, metal, or old .mods though.

- Cremax/Nothing