My scene life
After reading the pouet post about Hugi 29, I have decided to write this article. Why? To show sceners I know the scene at least a bit and that I love certain sides of it. I will also one more time give arguments about my points of views. Perhaps you will not agree but at least, I have done what is rational to explain myself. For non-rational people, I have found a way to talk, you will see that at the end of the article. Hope this will be a language understood by them. For the others don't get this end seriously, this is not for you.
To start let's state my age which is 29 and my birthdate in case you want to send me a present (bombs will be sent back to senders :)) is 1975/12/13, my birthplace is Montpellier in the south of France, a not so small city as there are 500,000 people inside it, France is a 60 million person nation. I have read in PP (pouet post about hugi 29) that I know nothing about the scene, well that's false. I have met sceners in my first year of secondary school. I first met Niko (a member of MJJProd, a ST group whose prods are available from pouet) who later became a popular and excellent graphician in the scene. This was in 1992, more than 14 years ago. I was then introduced to the Atari ST scene, as I had got a 520 STE one year before this meeting. Before that I had been a gamer both on the MO6 Thomson and the CPC 6128. I did little Basic programming on the first one and even trained Arkanoid using poke instructions. Then I used my cousins' Amstrad to play a lot of games. I played Ghosts and Goblins, Strider, Gryzor, Indiana Jones, Germaine, Sram, spy versus spy, Bruce Lee... But I never saw a Amstrad demo (I have seen them only a year ago in 2003, using an emulator). I bought one game with my Atari STE and this was Turrican I: a total pleasure with no STE code at all running 25 fps from start to end. The Amiga version was better but not so much (50Hz, better sounds, better scrollings with perhaps some more playfields, and surely 32 colors instead of 16). This time I was a gamer.
The first demo I watched on my Atari had been done by MCS (delirious megademo III perhaps but I'm not sure about the name) and was STE only: digitized speech sounds, soundtrack play, big bobs everywhere fast drawn, a lot of hardware differential scrollings. A friend who never entered the scene had given it to me in 1991.
After that, let's say one year later, I met sceners for the first time. It was MJJ members in 1992 at Jean Money secondary school, in Montpellier. Then after talking a bit, I learnt that Niko was graphician. And after a while, let's say, one month, he finally gave me a lot of demos after swapping them with a piece of candies which is called Mentos here in France :) I tell you about that because this was true and I need a lot of time to get demos from him. Well he was a busy guy making gfx, meeting friends in the scene, having his life and working hard at school (gfxing for pleasure on a small piece of paper, listening hard rock music like carcasse,...).
At school, there was not only Niko: Athee, Kyd, Bill, Joker, Blanche Neige (a black guy who was named with this pseudo to joke). All these guys were mainly coders. This was the good time when we read ST Mag, a magazine about the Atari ST and all kinds of video programming with interviews about demomakers (TLB: The Lost Boys, TCB: The CareBears who had created JQuake, Oxygene, Equinox, Mr Bee). I got a lot of games from these guys. They were cracked and there were intros featuring for this time good effects (by Replicants, Elite, fuzion,...). I was mainly interested in the so good to listen, chiptunes (the Atari STF was equipped with the same sound chip as the CPC but songs were far better, certainly due to the great composers on this machine like MadMax).
There were a lot of demos on the Atari STF. The first I saw was Overdrive by Phalanx (a hit, a total hit, I was totally blasted by this piece of Code and this sound, this siren in the loader). And there were a lot of others which were so great: The Union Demo (The Union: this one was converted to the playstation too), Equinox (Virtual escape, The Vodka Demo: alcohol as always :)), Electronic Images (Things not to do), TLB (MindBomb, ooh crickey wot a scorcher: a total hit, you must see this, Life is a Bitch, a cooperation with TCB), TCB (Cuddly demo,), Inner Circle (Decade Demo: the second demo I saw, really cool too).
And there were also some interesting things technically speaking and also interesting games concerning the gameplay like Enchanted Land (done by TCB), bitmap brothers games. Almost all Thalion games like wings of death, lethal excess for example were pure jewels in all sides. Michael Bitner was also a democoder and all Thalion games were done by ST demomakers like for example MadMax aka Jochen Hippel, who was the best known musician in the ST Scene.
Then as I was interested in demos I asked Kyd to copy me GFA Basic and started to code with it: I began with Omikron basic given with the Atari. This was interesting and soon, I was introduced to the Latinoïds group (MJJ was a scene related group, Latinoïds was more a group created by Kyd and this was a not so known group, but as always, this was a "just for fun" association). I also remember that I was interested in ASM coding as this was considered more powerful, faster, and in fact mandatory to make stunning and fast effects both in games and demos.
My dream at this time was to build a game and become a game coder in the future. What I have done on the ST? Trying to read a 68000 ASM equaliser listing, which was for me like chinese :) Then "coding" small stuff in GFA basic (an horizontal raster like beautiful line ballet and small effects like hardware and not hardware scrolling). To be honest I have done nothing noticeable on the ST and I know why: laziness and lack of motivation as always. Too many good games too!!! I simply started to play with graphical programming and with tools to get space on disk like crunchers (Atomic Packer, Automation, Ice Packer), trained some savegames using mutil, an hex editor. I also remember using copiers to get my stuff quickly copied on disks): fastcopy pro, diskcopy. I also played a bit with sound tools called Quartet and SoundTracker by Equinox.
Soon after the Niko and friends meeting (I had known Athee, Kyd and Blanche Neige for several years before the secondary school), just before Christmas, I met a guy with an Amiga and started to see those beautiful (and IMHO better than Atari ST ones, sorry ST fans...) crack intros by Crystal, and I also saw those megademos by Bass featuring really good sampled sounds for this period of time and techno, house sounds with technotronics samples. Yes sorry nobody is perfect :)). I was overwhelmed by the sound quality as this was something near the analogic radio quality or better. This was the period of sampled sounds with soundtracked tunes everywhere even on the ST few months after but this had a price as the CPU was used to do the mixing process and nearly nothing else could be run while a .mod was being played. I was also really astonished by the fact that even the sound is let's say 10 times better in term of quality. I think ST soundchips are great because they are melodious, but I like Amiga ones because the sound is better too. I don't have a preference, I've objectively heard that they are different sounds. But SoundChips on the ST were a bit boring with times. On the Amiga the effects were even better than on the ST or to be precise: more powerful, more fancy, well more (and easier to be done too).
In fact I thought now that ST and Amiga scenes are different and we can't compare 2 machines which are different. I had good times on the ST and this is not a machine I hate as it had given me a very interesting introduction to the scene. To be honest before writing my article "save the scene", I watched a lot of ST demos on an emulator and found all these old demos quite great and I thought: ST coders and artists are more talented than Amiga's ones as they can do things impressive even with less powerful hardware. Perhaps that vision of mine is subjective: I never managed to get demos to run as smoothly as on the real amiga using an emulator and I have tried a lot of different ones with different ROMS, different CPU emulations, different resolutions, but never got back the same feelings doing so. ST demos were running better than Amiga's one using respective emulators.
So continue my travel in the past. I then decided to sell my Atari STE because it wasn't used by most demos and absolutely no game coders at this time and because Amiga brought me what I loved: sounds and smoothness in games + several technically interesting features like near 0% CPU usage needed for 4 track soundtracks, blitter, higher resolutions with more colors and overscan. And I came with it to an Atari ST coding party at Vacquieres, a small town with let's say 500 inhabitants in the wild nature!!! This was the so good tiny coding party with let's say 10 persons max. This was a good time party with no screen, no girls, no music, only code, and interesting (technical / swap / gaming) talking with friends.
In fact soon after getting my Amiga, I found that with this computer that was beating consoles, I got the best OS so far released. I was quite interested in the OS as I used my computer to do what we call automation of repetitive tasks. I was very pleased by the Amiga because AmigaOS was ergonomic and powerful at the same time. A good side of this machine was its ease of use without losing the power. This was really interesting because at this time, U either got a powerful hardware (Personnal Computer, PC) and tons of difficulties to get it to run losing the power or a simple hardware and not a lot of results (the ST compared to the Amiga). I remember this workbench, with its icons, these docks, all the DOS commands with so Amiga pattern matching #? syntax, I remember also these climates (climate, Directory Opus) and all these tools quite interesting to use: powerpacker, xcopy pro, imploder (listen to the music remake created by Estrayk / Paradox), deluxe paint, asmone, devpac. And resource!!!
Later on I have joined several groups on the Amiga:
My First Amiga Group: Warp
Warp was my first Amiga group. Members: shen, tod, yogi, mytholog, humane, darkseed, dice. My functions: swapper, tools coder, systemizer (giving help with system, fixing code which don't run on computers due to non known rules about different hardware / software configurations). I met Shen and Yogi in a small village 45 Km far from my home. A relationship (a game swapper) presents me to the others groups members (he was in fact not loved at all by Shen who knows him already). I was with Shen and Yogi at the 3S (Sea, Sex and Soft) party.
My First Party Experience: The 3S
This party was my first "real one", meaning it was not a coding party but a demo party with 200 persons. Held at St Esteve near Perpignan in the south of France in summer 1994. There were a lot of big and famous french crews at this party: NGC, Bomb, Oxygen, Hoodlum (crackers scene), Warp (Yes we were famous, we were great, we were well...). This party was interesting at least for me because this was not big, not too tiny, it was well organised and the prods were great. This was an Amiga only party if I remember well. I was young at that time!!! I remember some of the prods:
a) Lester by Oxygen, an anniversary demo for 30 years old oxygen member called lester featuring hardrock music by megadeath (illegal soundtrack so...), not so good gfx and a lot of insults everywhere (members where jibing at each others), this was a fun demo of course and not a serious release at all. Aga only, funny, dynamic.
b) Casual by Bomb, an aga intro with cool gfx by Made
c) first preview of an Amiga doom clone made by Bomb with interesting code by Gengis, don't remember the name thought as my memory erases those kinds of things (Doom and its clones have killed my interest for games and restricted my computers addiction since Wolfenstein 3D release).
d) and a lot of others, I don't remember very well. I remember seeing slaine (a not very loved graphician, building astonishing good pictures but breaking gfx compo rules using a scanner while competing to compo with these illegal pictures against others graphicians) at the end of the party saying me that a demo about the end of socialism (with hammer and sickle inside it) needs a 68020 + FPU + FastRAM to run.
At this party there were several things which hurt myself and I must admit here one thing about my psychology: I always remember the bad sides of things, that's a really annoying features of my spirit. Well so at this party there was at night a french movie playing constantly called "c'est arrivé prés de chez vous". This was a bit lame for me because I always remember this black humour joke about "le petit gregory". "Le petit gregory" was a little child killed or drawn and whose story was really mediatized especially by the 8 o'clock news. I have thought this time about what her mother could have said, thought or felt about such an horrible joke. Well, there was also one annoying thing and this was lack of sleep and on this big screen there was a fractal zoom rotator running constantly: fractals are a representation of chaos, not a good thing to watch before sleeping... And last, at this party I remember Shen showing me a piece of code done by Tod saying "bye, bye guy, I don't continue coding and leave the scene", not a good start for a group to leave its talents and members... I was also in discord with Yogi as I didn't love his picture style: I loved what he drew but I saw no use for his pictures and I was surely also a bit jealous about what he was able to do with deluxe paint.
But well, at this party, I met guys really important for me like the Darkness crew and also Gryzor prowizard coder. I also remember the picture competition with Yogi artwork presented at first and saying then, "I will not vote for U, this is a competition, I vote for pictures I like...". He was not happy, I'm sorry for him, he never forgave me but the picture I chose to vote for was ending first... I'm frank that's also one part of my nature. This picture winning picture was with a flying ship surrounded by a brown circle. At party I don't usually vote for my crew: I vote for the best I see on screen, if it's my group then Ok, if not, no way, I'm objective and impartial. The party ended and I remember a lot of prods were not running on my A500 as this party was mainly following the Amiga battle against PC, and competitors were almost owning the new AGA A1200. I left the place and remember well the bomb crew making a circle hand in hand outside of the gymnasium as they were happy: I think making a good game with a closely-knit team is a source of joy for a group, and I think they were also winning the compo with a demo full of 3D filled vector and 3D mapped stuff. This was the time of C2P (Chunky To Planar) conversion routines to make 3D mapping on the Amiga possible and there were a lots of demos with 3D mapped stuff. At this party I got an aim to fullfill: making a good startup with a chart displaying all kind of hardware and info about the Amiga it was run on.
My Second Party Experience: The GASP
1 year after, I was still in Warp, but this time there were really big problems between me and Yogi. Shen was unmotivated about coding, and he was more interested in 3D modeling using lightwave on its accelerated machine. A new member called DarkSeed who was a computer graphics artist showed us what he was able to render and we were astonished, but he was professional and had worked a lot to get to this level. Shen was so after releasing "musique des garrigues" trackloader musicdisk and releasing a small intro with 3D interpolated dots cube, leaving the code to something more in adequation with his new studies: he was following architecture courses, which is geometry based like 3D modeling. So I was the only coder and there was not a lot of motivation in the team. I had finished my startup but didn't know how to handle 68040 and 68060 CPU efficiently and more problematic, I did not get enough money to upgrade and didn't know people with such hardware.
Just before the GASP, I decided to stop being a warp member and leave for Darkness. I contacted Xanth for that and met him at the GASP. This was a strange party: Almost only the french demo elite was there as the Assembly 1996 edition was held at the same date. I met there for the first time an IMHO excellent musician called Mytholog, who had joined Warp several monthes before. This guy was a sex beast: After arriving at Montpellier by train coming by a long travel from the Alpes mountains, in a city where he had never been before, he got a girl in bed at a demo party!
Well, let's talk about the party. There were some more people than at the 3S, let's say 600 persons I believe. This was a fiasco for the organisers as they were expecting far much people. But the ambience was cool and there was no annoying stuff on the big screen during the night, everything was well planed: The place was near a supermarket, beach, it was a sunny summer week end, the temperature was good. The video playing room had bad sound equipment but a party is not a cinema place so... There were gamers at this party and even a game competition: I remember a Saturn and Playstation I Tekken competition.
At the GASP, I joined the Darkness crew. Darkness was presenting a demo at this party, something like a compilation of effects one after another with fades and small transitions in between. Not really beautiful but a lot of coder work done mainly by Flint (with a rip too!!! Hey Flint don't hit me, everybody was and is ripping now too!). I remember Ra looking at the effects running to the Flint monitor and saying "what a big shit!" and I also remember Gengis looking at the demo and not saying what he really thinks about it and Flint saying, "you are kind". You know, the first thing you release is always perfectible by 100 ways. But you got to release it, or you won't release anything. Sadly this first thing will be evaluated like the others and in a compo, there will be people 100 times better than you. So you will get bad comments about what you've done, but don't bother and do your best every time, that's the way to improve yourself. After all a lot of guys say "that's lame, that's worth nothing", but a lot don't do anything so... Meeting other people, getting advice, help, comments, improvement ideas, style tricks and everything else is a way to satisfy everybody with your next release a bit more (you can't fully satisfy everybody: people are different and there is some contradiction between them). For example at this party, I remember PC demos like "goldorak" with the famous robot in gouraud shading rendering were shown on screen. This was astonishing but as a lot of the party visitors (including myself) were amiga fans, we were critisizing this demo althought it was a good demo. I remember a guy near me who was a PC owner and I remember myself not listening to what he said: this was a mistake, a total war machine, something like racism and not at all clever, I was young. This was the time of the Intel Outside demos everywhere on the Amiga. I remember well, the ST maniacs were also at this party: Eko a group responsible for the organisation I think was presenting demos for Falcon machine: great demos. I remember this coder with a big stomach and a big beard, a good coder and also Patapomme was there. I remember well those ST guys, clever guys: not a demo with an intel outside logo, not loosing a minute in a stupid war but making demos using their hardware to the max.
A few years after that a lots of Amiga owners moved from the Amiga to the PC. Even Chaos did this (intel outside demo were released one year ago by S.C. A.L.A). And now we use PC. This was a huge change in mentality, but all in all we get something easier to code while losing something called smart intelligence in OS and hardware, losing a symbiosis. But well, we have no choice: Millions of people chose the PC as their computer and money and jobs are on this platform so... And the Amiga was not following fast enough: Commodore was making the biggest mistake ever in marketing and Motorola CPU were not enough advertised to be used by the industry in masse. Macintosh users were 3% of the whole computer market and motorola was not releasing Intel clone so we had to move to the PC. Here we are today.
Well, at the GASP, thare were great guys and great demos too: Control by Oxygen, a good carebear demo by Eko (a falcon group), Bleu by NGC (I've helped Cyborg with his scrolltext routine).
My Second Amiga Group: Darkness
Members: xanth, flint,... Functions coder, swapper.
In darkness, I've done nothing, meaning haven't release any demo. This is a fact now: I do nothing when no well defined aims are given to me. At least I work when I'm in a group of people who have an aim even if it's not well defined. Ha yeah, I also work only when there is support and when I see the people I work with very often as seeing something growing is a pleasure. But working on my own, is most of the time a total loss of time :) I don't know where I go, and I then have no motivation. I usually work well when money is engaged or the work pleases me, like writing hugi articles for example or building another tools compilation. I used to build such tool compils on all platforms I've used a lot, as this has helped me get computer experience and pleasure. I then support a lot the tools coders with bug report and improvement lists. I've also swapped a lot and optimized / debugged a lot of sources I've got, reorganising code to speed it up, putting it inside Fast RAM when possible. Hey guys: you are coders, I hope now your code is better than before as it was a real mess to fix all this crappy stuff (from what I see, I think yes, you code better). I love when things follow rules which make them fine at least fundamentally. But I know very well what I've done nothing else: total lack of well defined aims have lead me to searching for the best editors, the best assemblers, the best... Well losing time finding tools which do the job for me, without thinking - this was a mistake. But trying all these tools has at least brought me something: adaptability. This also brings be something else: being selective with tools I use to get those which are simple and so less bugged. And this gives me some intelligence too: programmers don't use the same layout for their program, not the same functions, and yes, learning to use these tools needs some intelligence.
I also swapped a lot: demos with Harry Ivory, a GFX guy who was studying to become a police inspector (we also swapped cracked games!!! We were young that time meaning we had not realised that piracy was bad for computer games firms and we did not have a lot of money for them anymore), Kestrell of Syndrome in Germany and my favourite musicians and also friends: cyborg, Mytholog, Falcon, Ghandy / Gods. Of course there were others swappers in my list: but sadly, I don't have the list with me. I was also a lot involved in the improvement of tools I used like Exotic Ripper and ProWizard as I was a module addict. Yes, a part of my passion for information technology came from the fact that with a computer I can manipulate, tweak the information and get it from various sources.
After a while, I left Darkness: my letters stayed with no answers and I believe the main members I contacted like Xanth and Flint where more involved in real computer biased life than in scene and had no time for it. So I joined other groups.
Psykotrope / Honoo / Muttonheads
Members: falcon, potsky, adn, potsky, mytholog, humane, hp. My functions: coder, swapper.
In fact I was then a member of several groups at the same time. Psykotrope was a group with a strong relationship with honoo, muttonheads was a group built by Mytholog and Humane, who are two musicians. I don't know if Mytho and Humane were muttonheads at school but when music was involved, they were simply gods and everybody who listened to their tunes was like me: happy and satisfied.
In these groups I continued to be a swapper, enriching the computer experience of all members and swapping demos allowing the demo scene to be more popular. I also continued to code im assembly but this was most of the time not satisfactory: I was not enough motivated, my parents were all the time shouting for absolutely nothing important and this ambience was not good at all, neither for school nor for coding purposes. The fact I used computers was also a consequence of their attitude: when you use a computer you aren't trying to talk or negotiate with others. I mean you have less social relationship than people who don't use computers. So computer was for me a refuge. The best year for coding was when I left my family to be at boarding school. This way I managed myself to code my startup and my spirit was more structured and efficient than ever before. I also succeeded at coding a c2p routine which was slow but was working. This was the year 1995, the year when I got the famous rom kernel manual: something I had never got before, a book with understandable explanations about the Amiga hardware. Sadly no AGA documentation was found there but despite that, this doc was 10 times better than others I had: everything was clearly explained by people who build the Amiga and they were using pictures, schemes, well - they communicated efficiently (not like me :( sometimes).
The Saturne III Party
After being in psykotrope for a while, we decided to meet at the Saturne III held in Chelles near Paris. I remember this party as that was the last big party I visited. There I met Tony, ADN, Falcon, Eagle, Zone, HP, Codak / Syndrome, Guile / Syndrome, GandBox (I knew him from a long time ago as he had also been a member of Ivory), Xulax and Zaltor of NGC, a graphician from Psykotrope whose name I don't remember (perhaps it was Zone! Sorry guy!) and Solo. This was a really tiring experience: all the time there was sound at the place, there were girls dancing in front of the big screen, there were 3D rendered animations playing whole night and their was the AntiPC wild compo with a tower thrown from the top of a mountain!!! I also met a Spanish guy, and patapome from Eko and pulse I believe. There was also a contact with a tools coder (a swapper like me too) and he was at the party with his black and yellow PC tower! The saturne was the most tiring party I have been to: this was the one I used plane + train to reach! This was an experience!!! The first time I took a plane to go somewhere. I remember the first night after the party, as at home I was so dizzy.
The party was interesting but not so much (for me): hardly any space, there were guys including myself at the Pizza station who were not happy about PC and others who owned a PC and told us: the problem of memory on the PC is from the past, for a long time we have been used "MCI" (I don't remember exactly; as far as I know, the memory problem was resolved by means of flat protected mode) and there is no problem any longer. First argument. After that there was Ra throwing a mars bar because he wasn't selected for the gfx compo and there was also this lame wild compo against a PC tower, Oxbab who was a bit mad, and I also think there was a PC throwing compo outside the place!!! The saturne was famous and I expected a little more from such a big party. Finally I had a total headache during the night due to so many animations played on the big screen. The music compo was not my taste at all. Well, for me it was a total disaster party for organisation.
The demo compo was ouf, so good!!! :) Oxbab with his first PC demo killed everybody: with a 3D mapped show of a cave running like a charm on a P133 under DOS beating his master Gengis. This demo was for me a total success: it reminded me of the french exam I had just taken a week before involving Plato (the cave refer to it in my mind). And I also remember an old Gengis demo, there was an insult about his philosophy teacher saying "fuck U Platon"... The first Oxbab PC demo = the revenge of Plato. The fact Gengis was beaten wasn't a pleasure at all for me.
In fact I have never regarded a compo as a war between competitors as results are subjective: the sceners at the party vote, if you don't agree with their vote then for U the party results don't have a meaning. This was my all time thinking about party results and in fact when arts, colors, tastes are in the game, nobody is right, nobody is wrong, everybody has his point of view and his values so don't need to bother about that.
I also remember the Syndrome demo which was good with so special tenshu pictures.
Since that time, I haven't been in any group. I owned an unaccelerated A1200, which was more than rare.
I then met a lot of different people: Toxic and a friend of his who was a friend of mine who were both PC coders. I met Amiga fans and coders: TJ, Ben, 666, Neric, Tony, Scooter. In fact I never managed to be a part of their group but instead I was a friend, seeing what they do, interested in how they did it and talked about technical stuff. I was a guy who ask himself "how is it done?" all the time. This was the period of the Amiga + big extensions cards (68040 / 68060 + lots of fastram and even a GFX card). I never followed this trend: For me Amiga was about software optimization and tricks, not about MHz race.
I bought a PC in the mid 1996. What an experience! I remember the small sound made by the the CPU Fan, which
made it impossible for me to concentrate. On the PC side, I was too much
conditioned by the Amiga soul which kept saying "Intel is BAD, intel assembly is hard"
and such propaganda to be really attracted by coding. So even after meeting
Toxic, who was a coder, alone in its room making 3D mapped stuff in 80x86
assembly (he was a fond of electronic stuff and this was his fields of studies, but
he was so much concerned about code that he was often away from school to code :)),
I didn't make a lot of things using ASM. In fact, I was not attracted by
the PC OS layout: DOS. What a joke! This OS was the beginning of the M$ world software supremacy.
And I asked myself how it was possible: too lame. Well the PC was
in fact a good machine and tools on it are great: debugguers can trace
forwards and backwards, procedures are squared,... And it's really great
to code: nothing to optimize in first instance, everything runs fine,
just some stuff to do here and there. But I was more a tools coder than
anything else and my first program in asm was released and running fine
just one week after getting my first PC. A simple tool which enabled me to
change current dir using the content of a .txt file: cd
Amigamania
I was a bit tired about demo parties especially after the Saturne experience. So
for years I no more visited any. But Tony, an AmigaManiac, told me about
AmigaMania 21 I think! And as Ben would be at this party, I wanted to be
there with him. This was an Amiga Party only, in fact not a real party, but
an Amiga convention. The hardware card of PPC Amiga will be presented there,
Tony told me. So I took the train to Toulouse (the french High Tech Capital)
and was there. No more than 30 guys and 3 girls were there. Techno music - not my taste
(:)) was playing like hell during the conv and little happened.
We were there to see the presentation of the PPC card and I remember a guy was there
running Linux under this card. I hadn't kept up with the development of the Amiga for at least
3 years at this time. Tony brought along with him an expensive tower he had built in his
firm to show and promote it there. I remember there was an old video clip
from "The Cure" playing behind me and the computers were in the opposite direction of the
big screen - strange! I remember myself being rounded by hypnotized people
who were in trance faced with a piece of electronic chips made of sand. I
remember this well and I think: "These guys are dreamers, I've changed,
I'm no more on this trip." There was also money inside this little convention:
Tony with his Tower, the PPC card and Tony talking about niche market, a guy
talking about stock exchange. Too many money oriented guys, too many dreamers,
I will never go to parties like this any more. I met there Pulp and an Amiga user
who soon turned to the PC. I talked a bit about this conv to Ben and to Pulp and
they thought like me that the "spirit was gone".
Since mid 1996 (this is the date when I met my first big love), I almost
totally stopped coding on my own: I was more interested in girls and feign by
great sorrow than by coding. I was programming during my higher school studies in C /
C++ and Pascal and that was enough for me. This was also the date were I got my
first PC and that was something really disturbing: all big changes like RAM
capacity, speed improvement, less ergonomic and powerful OS (DOS mainly), and
even programming techniques and philosophy were a tragedy and I suffered a
breakdown. Yes, the Amiga was one thing, the PC something totally different: no
multitasking (I talk about the year of the Pentium 133 and Windows 95), totally
mad games (violent, and too much realistic), money oriented tool coders (
shareware with limited trials) and users focusing on maximum performance. The visual industry (GFX card makers, GFX
trend in video games) was also heading for a virtual reality and photo realistic
pictures, which was not at all what I used computers for: it was for me a refuge
so if reality entered the computer or the computer rendered reality-like pictures
then this was not interesting at all. All this was totally new for me and my
studies showed me that hardware was considered the solution to computer power problems whereas
I was deeply convinced of the opposite: on the Amiga my motto was "hardware is
the temptation, software is the solution", on the PC it was obvious that "software
is the temptation, hardware is the solution" was the main spirit
behind performance at least under Windows. So that was for me the end of a lot
of my dreams and the training period I got inside a small PC firm in the 1995
was for me the start of the waking up: computers are products like any others
and most users don't have any attraction or passion for them. Even more, the
technician I was working with, was an experienced coder and even after
releasing three games he was neither rich, nor happy at all, so I started asking
myself why continuing in such a job career?
In 1998, I met Alkama at Montpellier who was a talented DirectX and OpenGL
coder. He had moved from the Amiga to the PC without any apparent problems (he was
"mad" like most coders but seemed not to have so many mind problems as I had).
Sadly I was not skilled and intelligent enough to follow him: it seems that my
love for computers was dying and being in front of a screen for hours per day wasn't
my cup of tea. I was so anxious about my future in a firm that I wasn't
able to concentrate. I was more involved in reading Asian philosophy than in
anything else and competition inside higher school made me stop coding for fun and
for life. In fact I was looking for peace in both earth and mind, nothing
else. Moreover, I was older than the others and then I was not concerned by the
same things. In fact I wasn't at my place and studies bored me a lot so I
decided to work and in 1999 found this way something more interesting: being
useful and helpful to others give me a reason for living.
Then from 1999 to 2003, I only watched let's say 10 demos all in all and on not
enough powerful PCs to get a good display outcome. This was why I thought the demo
scene was dead. I've watched a lot for 1 year and yes, I think the scene
is not dead. The scene is alive at least socially but well, prods are too
numerous: too many demos, not like before, not with the same spirit. I
was astonished at the power of the PC beast and the mathematical knowledge
of coders but I think it was too much: too big, too powerful, too many
things on the screen, too many effects, too many "make up effects", too
much blend, too much of "everything" in fact.
Conclusion
So it's time for a conclusion:
What have I given to the scene?
I dedicated so many hours to swapping stuff here and there improving the scene's
popularity in Europe. Yes Kb, copying disks, writing letters, selecting
tools, making compilations, writing mountlists to put more stuff on disks,...
takes time and energy. And it is useful: without people responsible for
logistics not only the scene would have not started, but nothing spreading
products or ideas either: without duplication books wouldn't have become
popular and without books you would surely never have learnt coding. I also did
personal 68K assembly courses to Kestrel / syndrome. I optimised intro
packs inside psykotrope, I released a nor crypt config file loader for
their intro compil called SpaycePack. I also made the Amiga version of
Jurassic Pack more system friendly while I was in contact with Lars aka
Ghandy. I tried to convince coders of being more system friendly while
coding as launching Amiga scene prods on accelerated machines was a
nightmare and sadly this is still true today when using Winuae. I've
fixed tons of sources, collected some too and have given them to coders
when needed. I acted mainly as a link between sceners and that was fun as
it was human and usefull. But newskoolers, those who started with
internet can't sadly understand that as experience isn't sharable. So I'
ve given time and passion to the scene. And I have also consumed a lot,
but that's sharing spirit.
What has the scene given me?
A few GFX have hurt my sensitive soul, while a lot have brought me colors and
happy shapes in my head. Thanks you graphists and designers for such
artistic stuff.
Operating systems like AmigaDOS allow me to make several
things at the same time, thus saving a lot of time. AmigaOS also brings me lots of
headache!!! Windows leads to a lot of problems for me but once I've understood this
OS requires a highly powered machine to be good, it made me spend very much money to get
a good machine for 3 years (with fast CPU, fast GFX Card, Excellent Mobo, a
maximum of fast RAM usually 512 MB or more and a not so big but fast HD). Linux
brings me a kind of hacker spirit and a lot of joy.
Sceners bring me joy as working and exchanging stuff or ideas really improves
intelligence and the meaning of life. Their way of thinking, their experience,
their spirit have given me a lot of good time and have improved my global life point
of view. Maths also help a lot.
Demos for mind fuck like Coma by Rebels and several others have made
me confused. Others that are IMHO well designed, well
structured with a message or a spirit have brought me joy. They have kept me away from
bad guys, drugs and any other dangers a young ignoramus like I've been is exposed to.
They've taught me intellectual stuff like line, surface, volume and maths, which are a way to
train my brain and help solving problems I encounter all the time in my life.
In fact demos have change my way of viewing life: by understanding several
things in this world and especially those I was interested in (like the truth,
what is in the matter,...), understanding the two infinites, where we go,
what happens after death, where we come from... But that's another story, I will
relate this in the article "demos and philosophies" in the next issue of Hugi.
Thanks for coders to introduce myself to maths / physic / sciences.
Music and musicians have mostly brought me harmony and joy.
I can't stop being stirred when listening to
scene music and especially cracktro chiptunes!!!
Scene music, scene music, scene music, my drug, my reason for living, my chocolate, my sex, my alcohol, my beer,...
Why there is not such good stuff on radios?
Old modules are so GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!
Amiga / ST / PC / C64 chiptunes are pure wonder.
MadMax = Jochen Hippel, Ben Gladish, Jogeir / VD, Groo, Nhp, 4mat /
Anarchy, Reed / Fairlight, estrayk & no-xs & wotw / Paradox, Maf, Chris
Huelsbeck, Mytholog, Humane and a lot of others are simply gods of harmony.
I must tell you all two things:
THANK YOU 1000000000000000000000000000000 TIMES FOR YOUR MODS.
Without you life couldn't be possible.
I have 3 CDS full of crunched mods!!!
Music: the difference between human beings and animals!
If you want a copy simply ask! Any music web site is welcome.
Send them to crawn of cryptoburners too (hi mate, the 5 cds are great?)