______/\__________________________ __ ________________ ___ /\_______ \____ \ ________ _ _ ______ \ / \| \ ________ | \/ ______/ / | \ _) \ \_/ \ | \ / \ \ _) \ | \______ \ / | \ \ | \ | \/ \ \ / \ \ / \ \_____ /_______/___| /_______/\____\_____/_______/_________/________/ \_____/ |____/ Subscribers : 2449 DemoNews 150 - 04 February 1998 Archive Size : 5.4Gb THE FINAL ISSUE >------------------------------------------------------------------ Contents -- Introduction .................................... Snowman Calendar In Review /demos ........................................ Snowman + Phoenix Articles That's Entertainment .......................... Dan Wright The Grey Day .................................. Eye The Rise And Fall Of The Demoscene ............ Zippy What Is Oldskool .............................. Trixter Interview With Hunz ........................... GD Disintegration Of The Old Graphics Scene ...... Danny Coding Mathematics Part 3 ..................... Tiberius ASCII Adjust For Division ..................... Submissive Pipe Generation From Arbitrary Shapes ......... Ranganathan Jason, The Man, The Musician, The Story ....... roboMOP A New Hope .................................... Trixter Interview With Snowman ........................ Ryan Cramer General Information >-------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction -- Hello all, and welcome to DemoNews 150. _____Introduction This is the final issue of DemoNews. Why? See the interview at the end of this newsletter for details. You might have to dig through the text a bit, but I do explain things there. Perhaps more effort has gone into this issue of DemoNews than any other. I personally have spent over 15 hours in the past month, collecting articles, contacting others to contribute articles, formatting text, checking and rechecking for errors. Overall I'm quite happy with the result. We have solid articles about demos, music, graphics, and code. We snuck in some quality editorials, and I finally got a chance to reminisce about the "old days" in an interview. I appreciate the time that everyone spent attempting to make this concluding issue an excellent one. New article submissions are still welcome. If you send them to me, I will do my best to use them. This might be accomplished through TraxWeekly or Imphobia, html-izing the article and putting it on the archive, or even giving it to another quality site maintainer. There is no need to unsubscribe yourself from the listserver. Who knows... I may actually make use of the list in the future. _____Conclusion Thank you all for taking an interest in this newsletter over the years. Without your support, it would have ended much earlier. Take care fellow sceners. Keep the community strong. Christopher G. Mann (Snowman / Hornet) - r3cgm@hornet.org 04 February 1998, 18:06 PST >------------------------------------------------------------------ Calendar -- The calendar has been moved to http://www.hornet.org/ha/pages/calendar.html >----------------------------------------------------------------- In Review -- -- /demos ------------------------------------------------------------------> :: Snowman / Hornet - r3cgm@hornet.org :: Phoenix / Hornet - phoenix@hornet.org [Note: This was originally sent as informal email within the group on 13 Jan 1998, but Trixter suggested it be reformatted as an article for DemoNews.] [Snowman writes...] Last night I went home and watched all of the demos from TP97. Good thing I burned them on CDROM because I didn't relish the thought of downloading 55 megs on a 28.8k modem. :) Anyway, I just wanted to share a couple brief thoughts about the demos this year (and I hope Andy can expound upon this): - The code in almost all demos seemed really well optimized. I'm running a really nice vanilla machine at home, and was impressed with the framerates I got (for the most part). The current system configuration for radar.hornet.org is: Pentium 133 32Mb RAM Synergy ViperMAX Diamond Stealth 32 w/S3 (2 meg) NCR SCSI controller 2 gig HP SCSI drive 4x Toshiba SCSI CDROM drive For one reason or another, this hardware works together really well and I love my little machine. But this is beside the point. - I didn't have ANY of the 30 demos hard crash my system. - Only one demo wouldn't run correctly for me (Lessons by The Polka Brothers + Cubic Team, 3rd place). The music played, and it was obvious that the demo was going, but the video mode was initialized wrong and I didn't wait through the entire thing to see if they'd switch back to a more forgiving mode. - Unless I'm missing something, I disliked the 2nd place entry (Mundai by Blasphemy). Object show. - The 4th place entry (Kolme Pient Pukkia by M0ppi Productions) rocked the party! Oh man... cartoon-style 3D, a plot, well-designed, and very funny. This is one of my 3 recommendations for demos to get (m0p-3pp.zip). - Uhm... maybe Phoenix mentioned it and I forgot, but have the rest of you seen the demo that Andy coded for TP97? Although this demo didn't seem to be a contender, design seems to be a skill that American coders have. This is #2 of my 3 recommendations (dc5-caq2.zip). - And the grand finale. Tribes by Pulse. This demo is one of those things you really NEED to see. I can't say enough positive things about this demo. The rest of you should know by now that I am a deeply symbolic and metaphorical kind of guy. This demo fed my mind. The effects were as effects should be... they were there and didn't distract me from the real gold of this demo, the plot. I'm still trying to figure out if I see this more as a demo on abortion, animal rights, parenthood, isolation, or any number of other possible interpretations. Pulse did such an incredible job with this production that I find myself trying to figure out exactly what the message was, long after watching the demo. If I ever show someone outside of the demo scene what a demo is like, I will probably change my standing "Machines of Madness" to "Tribes". This is my #1 recommendation for demos to get (tribes.zip). [And Phoenix replies...] Well, being home for the most part on a modem connection, and working on the Hornet Charts and reviewing older demos, I didn't get around to downloading most of the TP7 demos yet. But here is what I've seen so far. "Square" by Pulse. Really artsy. Uses backgrounds to snazz up the effects. This demo overall ran rather slowly on my machine, leading me to think it stores floats like no tomorrow. [Phoenix has a Cyrix processor.] Rather creative design, I think, but, no effects that reached out and grabbed me. "Tribes" by Pulse. A nice one! The effects ran VERY fast on my PC, only a couple 3d engines have run faster. The music synchronization is a little odd in the beginning (abrupt changes). I also dislike the attempt at poetry toward the middle - there's a trend of showing words that don't make any sense. Oh, and the pointless nudity too. OK, put that aside, and you have a great 3d movie of sorts. Parts like the transition to the colored bobs world gave me warm fuzzies only ****+ demos like Contrast are capable of. But, it ends abruptly toward the end - right when I'm into it.. "Elektroniks" by Doomsday. Well, they said it was a 5 day demo, but it's very solid. Everything fits together, and there's a lot of graphics/design to accompany the effects. There were no real cool-ass scenes like Boost had, but I think the overall quality of this one was as good if not better. "Trip" by Kosmic. Er, well, I THINK this one got shown at TP7. It's another GooRoo vector show. But, the scenes are pretty good.. there's some metaballs hovering over a large hand, a T-Rex with gold chains stomping through some terrain, and a spaceship flying through a city with some video billboards. Unfortunately, the design is just simply not there - the infamous GooRoo still screens are abound. We'll have to see how the final release, if any, turns out. "Cack 2" by DC5. Err, I'll move on to the next one. ;) "Herring" by Fobia Design. I only saw this since I got it off a web site for Howler to enter :). It's a little nicer than most Fobia design stuff - lots of neat ideas. But, a few borrowed ones, and the gratuitous chick-pics are abound. Still, decent. "Lessons" by Polka Bros/$een. An attempt to cash in on Polka Bros/Amiga fame, I think :). You can tell where the Amiga ideas were (2d) and where the PC ideas were (3d). This one just didn't seem to pack in too much power to me. I liked the 3d scene toward the end, and the quick cartoon animation, but random flashing words kind of ruined things. "Forever Dreaming" by Acme/Quad. If anything, get this for the music. Vic proves again to be a Dutch Necros. Other than that, it may have a bit of a thrown-together feel (made in 3 days), but it's still nice. That's it for the demos. I did see ALL the intros, too. Quite a good selection of 64ks, I think - not many outstanding ideas, but a good level of quality. Unfortunately, since I went from a S3 Virge to an ET6000, one intro won't work and another has messed up colors. Sigh, either I'll figure it out or try to get my old card back. :) >------------------------------------------------------------------ Articles -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "That's Entertainment" :: Dan Wright - dmwright@aracnet.com When I started writing this column for this last DemoNews I began with a couple hand written pages on how I discovered demos and a little bit of the Hornet demo site history. Well, I decided to scrap it since I've been there and done that. If you happen to be interested in that sort of stuff check out previous editions of this newsletter or read the demo FAQ. Today's lesson in life is about moving on. After I passed the buck to Mr. Mann I drifted further and further away from the demo/music scene. I guess it has something to do with getting older and the trading off of time. I've seen many people come into this scene, produce great things and then vanish. Kind of like as a kid when you build models, ride a skate board, BMX, etc. Very few people stick with it for a lifetime and far too many end up departing from whatever scene it was way before reaching their full potential. I didn't, nor did others, wake up one morning and say "Okay, that is it, I'm leaving the Demo scene today." For most of us participation slowly fades away as other "more important" tasks consume us in our everyday world. Some might consider the Demo/Music/Computer scene as a big escape but for me it was a hobby. I still enjoy demos the rare times I download them and get them working on my machine. I do feel the demo heyday has passed us by though. The WEB with all its fancy graphics and multimedia is the new medium pulling talent from the dwindling demo scene. Only you know what the future holds. Make some choices, go with your gut feeling and best of luck with your new endeavors. Oh yeah, one last thing. If you find that you are the last one left please close the door on your way out. Thanks. It's been fun. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "The Grey Day" :: Eye / UniSex It's Monday morning. It rains today. I look out of the window, and I see packs of young school girls, running around under colourful umbrellas. They scream and shout. It's the start of the new school season. This world is strange. We all live on the same ground, but deep inside ourselves we all belong to different worlds. Whilst those school girls giggle and discover boys, others spend their days making demos on a computer. I am one of those who make demos on Amiga. I await the release of new ones, watch them with careful eyes, think about their concept and wonder about their makers; sceners like me, who use high tech hardware and tools on PC (more than often at work), to make non-interactive software on Amiga. The Amiga scene has become very similar to the C64 one - everyone works on PC and finishes the product on the target machine (Amiga/C64). Coders code in C, graphicians use pressure sensitive pens and Photoshop filters, musicians make 8 channel modules. Swappers die one by one, and BBSi turn into FTP sites, still with a ratio rating. The scene changes and Java demos gain popularity. The room for exceptions (sceners who communicate via mail, graphicians who use an old Deluxe Paint versions, musicians who make 8K chip tunes, writers who produce a magazine on disk every 4 months) exist, but it is small, dull and will lead nowhere. These uses of making demos belong to another scene which was different. Nothing can exist forever and the tendencies of the scene are no exception. Now that coders have coded whatever there was to code in 3D domains, someone gains inspiration to drop the accent on developing new and better looking environments for 3D scenes. The code exists, the underground music is ready. It is the modeller that decides when a new demo is made. He must make the textures. He must make the objects. He must provide animated scenes. Without the Amiga, the demo scene would have a totally different meaning. Together with the C64, the mother of all scenes, the PC scener must look and understand. We must learn from the errors of the ones before. We must study old concepts to procreate in our scene. Else the PC scene will eventually become a phantom of itself. The bell rings. The school day is over. The scene continues to exist, to morph into new forms. Old wizards leave and users turn into new-coming sceners. This is the scene of young teens. The old names now belong to the books of history. They are episodes of another scene, to be read and talked about. Nothing more, nothing less. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "The Rise And Fall Of The Demoscene" :: Zippy / unIon - thezippy@rocketmail.com _____Introduction Hello folks, just found out that my BIOS handles the transition past year 2000, so I'm in a good article-writing mood. However you may have noticed the quite ominous title of this article, and well, it is an ominous article. Ever seen one of those guys running around the street trying to make eye-contact with people while he yells "Armageddon tomorrow!"? Well, how should I put this? ... Armageddon tomorrow! _____Little Jimmy, The Icon-Hacker In the last couple of years the demoscene has been tearing itself away from the underground. In my opinion it wasn't ready. Or maybe the outside world wasn't ready. A lot of people got connected to the demoscene through the warez-scene, or the classic "I saw 2nd Realty, and became a scener". This kind of thing made the scene grow. Little Jimmy grows up, gets a computer, gets hold of a modem, and masses of warez. He sees a cracktro, or a game cracked by some demoscene related-people, and becomes interested. For starters games are getting so huge, and copy-protection is getting a bit better, so few kids bother to sit for hours on end to DL a game. And of course there are so few good hackers nowadays too. People actually exist who "hack" from Win'95 with some ready-made programs. "Point 'n Hack", sorta thing. Not exactly potential demosceners... Then there's the Second Reality thing. If little Jimmy had seen it three years ago or something he would have been impressed and devoted his life to the scene... maybe. The thing is that today little Jimmy has his PC stuffed with Microsoft programs, and is used to "I click on the little picture, and the game starts". Little Jimmy becomes one of those kids who has parents who thinks he's a whiz with his computer, but really doesn't even understand what a computer is. Today little Jimmy can't get 2nd Reality to run. He tries looking for a little picture to click, but when he finds it his screen goes black. He doesn't know much about "that thing with Windows called DOS", and laughs if someone asks him to perhaps use a different boot setup. Little Jimmy doesn't even know he HAS an AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, or a COMMAND.COM. He definitely doesn't have the guts to mess with MSDOS.SYS (the easiest way to make a Win'95-based machine start in DOS, by the way, apart from DELTREE WINDOWS ;). Little Jimmy gives up, and plays a game coded poorly that still manages to take up 4 CDs. _____Friendliness So some sceners think "Oh well let's try a Win'95, or even a Java-demo", then it'll at least get seen by more people, and maybe some people will be attracted to the scene. Talk about turning to the dark side of the force. :) Now little Jimmy actually CAN click his little picture and see a demo. He won't bother to mess with anything in his system, and definitely won't try to make something himself. I once tried to explain to some non-demoscener friends of mine about how programs are made, and such, but they just kinda smiled and said they thought that programs were just sort of magically made at some factory or something. Seriously! Something needs to be done to save the demoscene. I don't think the answer is to blend in with the rest and start making Windows-stuff. I think the answer is friendliness. Yeah, people should just be more friendly. Why didn't I think of that earlier? Would be good for world-peace and stuff. :) The scene is too full of people who think they "rule the scene". I don't wanna mention any names, because I'm a total wimp :) , but I'm sure a few names will spring to mind. People tend to think that being a newbie is synonymous with being a lamer. This is especially true when it comes to the elite sceners. It is just so wrong. Everybody has to start somewhere! Everybody has to learn. Nobody gets born with the ability to code, track, draw, etc. It's a learning process. People with masses of potential don't dare to explore the scene because they fear ridicule, and because nobody will talk to them. Think of how much better the scene would be if those who were really good helped out those who were just starting. Perhaps the scene has become too competitive. Perhaps the prizes have gotten too big for there to be any fun involved. Recruit sceners! Take newbies under your wing instead of ignoring them. There's a huge difference between newbies and lamers. I think most people know that. You just have to be able to see clearly enough to separate the two. Talk to some friends, see if they've got a potential scener in them, talk to the little dude 'tuggin at your leg saying "How is it I code a .PCX-viewer again?", and for gods sake answer e-mail! The most discouraging thing in the world is to send mail to some guy you admire and not even get a response. When I first got into the scene, in '94 I think it was, quite a few people didn't bother to answer my mails, but the answers I got were much more friendly than today's "go away little lamer" attitude. A little ironic fact I'd like to mention is that Future Crew got a lot of people into the scene through their great demos, but they also scared a lot of people away with their cocky attitude. _____Shameless Plug #1 If you happen to be pretty new to the scene or would like some info you could try DL'ing "The DemoScene Starter Kit 2.0", that I've made. It'll be available from The Hornet Archive, and various BBS's sometime during January, or February '98. Look for DSSK20.ZIP. There you'll find masses of info, including an e-mail list with about 350 addresses, coding-tutorial, plus much more. All with it's own interface. You could DL previous versions, but frankly they suck. _____Conclusion Armageddon tomorrow? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "What Is Oldskool" :: Trixter / Hornet - trixter@hornet.org [The following is the introduction to the upcoming site www.oldskool.org, a website dedicated to classic demos and classic PC games. www.oldskool.org will open in March, 1998.] _____Introduction What is Oldskool? Oldskool is my flavor of "Old school", a term commonly given to something that, while old, was (and still is) innovative, fresh, proper, clever, and generally correct and the right way to do things. The old school begets the new school (anything new and modern), for you certainly can't get to anything new without going through the old. For example: Robotron is the old school, while Quake is the new school; Sister Sledge is the old school, while En Vogue is the new school; and so on. Old school is, ultimately, a term of respect. Why "Oldskool" and not "Old school", then? That is easily understood if you know me and my background. I am currently a member of Hornet, a demogroup. I was a member of INC back in '87 and '88 (definitely not a demogroup ;-). Both types of groups are known for keeping the bastion of hobbyist computing alive, with roots back to the beginning days of the "homebrew" computer clubs -- achieving the impossible, and then sharing that information with the world. _____Software Pirates Software Pirates promoted the Universal Truth that information should be free, and also amazed me because they unraveled sophisticated and clever attempts to prohibit that Truth -- and most of them weren't old enough to drive a car yet and knew nothing of conventional programming techniques. Back then (before 1985), most pirates were one-man productions -- the same guy obtained/stole the software, stripped it of its protection, modified the graphics to put his signature on it, then spread it around. They were distributor, cracker, and courier all rolled into one. Sometimes they even managed to improve the software by fixing bugs or making it more compatible across different hardware variations -- all without the original source code. Nowadays, cracking groups (the term "pirate" has fallen into obscurity) have at least three distributors, crackers, couriers, organizers, ANSI artists, PR, etc. per group, which turns it from a hobby into a machine. It's all about 0-day warez, which, as a cultural philosophy, is just pathetic. It's lost about 95 percent of its culture. It's rape, pure and simple. _____Demo Coders Demo coders created (and occasionally continue to create) demos, which achieved the impossible -- excellent colorful graphics in non-colorful low resolution display modes, wavetable music on systems without wavetable hardware (sometimes even without a sound card), real-time fluid three-dimensional graphics on systems without dedicated 3D hardware (and in some cases like the Commodore 64, even without the convenience of a DIVide instruction!) ... and all with a fresh sense of style and conviction that asked only one thing: "Admire me. Admire this. I've achieved the impossible." It's hard NOT to admire. While I have respect for the people who broke new artistic ground coding demos and discovering/cracking clever copy-protection schemes, I have even greater respect for the people who coded software for the early PCs -- they were "elite" before elite was coined. They wrote compilers in assembler, they wrote assemblers in machine code, and they pushed the PC to new limits because they were clever and because they had to make do with what they had (unlike today, where you can program as lazy as you want because you can always buy a new PC in six months). They achieved the impossible because they didn't know it was impossible. That's oldskool. _____Conclusion I used to admire oldskool, continue to do so, and probably will until I die. Now that I'm older and educating the new blood with what I've experienced (and learned from that experience), I have BECOME oldskool, and this site is that extension of myself. Some of the younger folk in today's popular culture use "old school" as an interchangeable term for "retro"; some even use it when making fun of the past. But oldskool is a term I proudly use with the utmost respect. I hope you will, too. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Interview With Hunz" :: GD / Hornet - gd@hornet.org _____Introduction Hunz is a PC musician living in Australia. With a strong root on the Amiga platform and the Protracker environment, he has adapted well to Triton's Fast Tracker 2 after migrating to the PC platform. Some of his recent notable works include a musicdisk, "Barcode," and a song titled "Clone it." His co-op MC5 entry with Basehead, titled "Digital Ritual", ranked 5th place in the veteran division. His music is unique and displays a tremendous amount of talent and effort. _____The Interview Q: Can you tell us about yourself? A: My name is Hans Van Vliet. I'm from New Zealand and my parents are Dutch. I'm adopted, so I'm not Dutch at all, although I like all their food. ;) Q: What was your first computer system? A: I had an mc10. Man, those things rocked. Its music was so 'leet. ;) One channel and and one instrument. Q: One channel? That's insane. :) What was your earliest experience with music that you can remember? A: When I was 4 or 5, I used to sit at my parents' organ and write crappy lead tunes on it. I used to say to my mum, "Mummy, come and listen to this tune," and off I would go. She would just smile, and say, "Hrm, that's nice dear, now go and play with your toys." Q: Over the years, what different music/computer interfaces have you used? A: I've used, um, mc10, vic20, c64, amiga500, amiga600, amiga2000, amiga1200. Then I had to get this stupid thing... damn this PC. ;) I used this lame extension thing for the c64 that was a plug in cart, and I had to program all the music in through basic... that really sucked. Then I advanced to the amiga using soundtracker, then I moved over to Protracker. Then a games company wanted 8-channel music, so they got me this PC computer with Scream Tracker. Scream Tracker was crap compared to Protracker, then Fast Tracker 2 came out and everything was fine. Thanks Triton. ;) Q: Was that your first game music job? A: I worked on a game called Stargunner. I started this in year 10/11 of school and it took away a lot of my time (but that was the least of my worries). Later on they basically said, "You're crap," so they got someone else. Who knows, maybe I was crap. Q: Ouch! What company was it? A: Apogee, the American company. George was the team leader; he was the one behind Duke Nukem 3d. American music is so different from the Euro music I was weaned from. ;) Q: Have you done game music since then? A: I did one other game, and I've steered away from games, but I would love to get involved with them again. I need to prove to myself that I can do theme type music. The other game I did music for was Kingdoms at War. I did all those tunes in one day, and it was rather crud. ;) Q: What musical instruments or equipment do you currently own? A: I only have a crappy Casio which is rather 'leet hooked up to a guitar pedal. That's about it. I have a pentium 133 and just the usual sound programs. Oh, I have about 6 sample cd's that I pick to bits. ;) (This is where I get all of my sounds from). I have an sb16... yes, the king of hiss soundcard. I'm not ashamed. =) Q: How and when did you first come in contact with the demo scene? A: Hehe, hrm... with this lame demo group called "Southern Guild". This was back in 1993-94. I used to go to some of their meetings, which was just an excuse to pirate all the latest games. We never released anything, but we did have a fun time (I think). Q: Was "Barcode" your first musicdisk? A: No, barcode was my 2nd. I released one on the Amiga called "Jukebox fantasies"... I used to be called "jukebox" back then. Jukebox fantasies was a joint music disk with some other person. It was rather lame, as I can remember. It had a crappy interface, but it was damn good for an Australian release. ;) Q: What was the reaction to your "Barcode" musicdisk? A: I don't know, I guess I didn't get much of one. I remember a few people saying it was "different but well done". Personally I think it's ok. I could have made it a bit more. It was too simple in some parts and other songs didn't really work well together. What I mean is, as a FULL music disk some of the tunes didn't quite work in there. ;) But Barcode isn't my normal style; I was trying to create something new. Q: Where does your current handle "Hunz" come from, and how long have you been using it? A: Well, it's kinda how I want my REAL name to be said. Here in Australia they say "hAAAAAns," but when I spell it "hunz," they say it right. ;) I've been using it for about 3-4 years. Q: You mentioned that you get sounds from sample cd's. What kind of effects processing do you use? A: I didn't use any back then (for "Barcode"). I just had to use the sample as is. But now I'm using the most 'leet program I've ever used, Soundforge 4... (I'm sorry I haven't purchased it yet, but I will as soon as I make money). ;) Soundforge is amazing, I can't stop using it. Oh, I did use a 2020 (which is a guitar pedal), awhile back. Q: Have you had any music education? A: Not really, but I've managed to pick up a lot over the past few years. At school, music was only offered for years 8-10, so for year 11-12 I couldn't do music. )= I then applied for music college and I got in, which only lasted one year, but I learned things from that. As for music instruments, I'm Mr. Selftaught as a lot of people are these days. I find this is that best thing sometimes. Q: What is your current occupation? A: Hehe, don't laugh, but I work at McDonald's (well, that is my paying job). Other than that, I have 3 bands, and I work tv/theater in my spare time. Q: What do you do in each of the bands? A: I sing in 2 of the bands, and write techno music for the other band. Q: Can you talk about some of the demoscene projects you're currently working on? A: I'm working on a some very weird music with Basehead... we are trying to create something that the listener struggles to listen to. We are putting a lot of time into it, and don't expect to release it until late this year. I'm working on a co-op music disk, were I co-op with a heap of people and release it as one big co-op music disk. I've got heaps of people working on it: Basehead, Wave, Tito, Radix, Thefear, Scirocco, Mickrip, and heaps of others as well. I'm really looking forward to it ;) Q: Sounds like it will be a great disk! Good luck with it. What groups are you currently in? A: I've just joined analogue and vault. [Editor's note: since this interview was performed, Hunz has also joined Five Musicians.] Vault is an all Australian music group with Mickrip, Yannis, Ozone, Chuckb, Pulse, Chris, Firelight, Clef, Jase, Legend, and me. We will be releasing expose2 I think. ;) Oh, and I'm working on a musicdisk with a twist: it's going to be all singing tunes. None of this lead stuff anymore. ;) Q: "Clone it" is a very unique song with original vocals and a humorous twist. I'm assuming the conceptual inspiration was from the supposed sheep cloning, but where did the musical inspiration come from? A: Well, the song just happened... everything fell into place. K8to half inspired it when I was chatting to him one night... dennisc did the same thing to me too... both these people are so cool to talk to. ;) Oh, and you GD (suck suck)... but, yeah... I just got the instruments and started tracking, and everything fell into place. Later on, I dumped the tune, then forced myself to finish it (which I wish I didn't, because some of the parts I added just don't work). Q: Do you have any plans for the future? A: Yeah, I want world domination. ;) I just hope that I continue to do music for the rest of my life and if it takes me everywhere then I will be extremely happy. I have no other plans, except MUSIC and more music. I will be doing a solo cd this year/next year too, which should be very weird, I hope. ;) It will be fully tracked... the tunes are about 16-32 meg each... hrm. ;) I'm going by the name "dweeb"... I think the album will be called "smoke me"... but these are just ideas. I've written the title song "smoke me" already. ;) I'm hoping that my home band "Beanbag" gets signed soon... cuz I just love our music. ;) Hrm, that's about it... oh, I want more time... and more sleep. ;) Q: Are there any demo groups that you actively follow? A: Not really, but I do like Nooon, only because of their Amiga involvement, and I like Complex and Orange. I wish Spaceballs and Red Sector would do something again. ;) Q: What changes would you like to see in the demoscene? A: Not much, just a bit more understanding. I was reviewed in the mod weekly review, and I got a really cool mark, but the thing that stood out was this statement, "he could have done this in less channels... like 10-14 chns" (clawz). I think he's missed the point: the music is what works, who cares how I achieved it. I thought that was a dumb reason to mark a tune down. I thought that was rather silly. ;) Q: Do you want to send out any greets or messages? A: Thanks everyone for listening to my stuff; I love you all. Thanks heaps. HigherBeing, you rock, one day you will live in America. Stein, thanks for the cd, you also rock. Ari, thanks for your support. Everyone who talks to me on #trax, , you all rock. I could write every bloody name that I know, but what would be the point. ;) Q: Are you still active on amiga? A: Nope, not anymore... I just sold my a1200 and left it behind. The PC scene is so strong, why ignore it? I know this amiga user and he is still buying stuff for it... AMIGA IS DEAD! Leave it in peace. It's not Jesus, so it will never come back to life. Q: What do you think of amiga groups that are heavy into proclaiming "PC SUCKS!" ? A: I just think it's funny, because they are so right. =) Q: Thanks for doing the interview, and thanks for putting up with gd math (1 hour = 2 hours). :) A: Hehe. Thanks; it's such a buzz to be the center of attention. ;) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Disintegration Of The Old Graphics Scene" :: Danny / Eidos Interactive - danny.geurtsen@eidos.co.uk Many of you have probably heard in the past few weeks that I have decided to no longer continue my creative efforts for the scene. I know that until recently I have not been showing any signs whatsoever of coming to such a harsh decision. As a matter of fact, in an interview I gave for a scene magazine somewhere around the last months of 1997 I claimed I would become more active than I had been ever before. During the often long periods between the pictures I released I continued to develop my styles and skills. My professional career however kept me from showing the scene the progress I always force myself to make in order to become a better artist. When my busy schedule at Eidos cleared up more or less I saw chances to invest some serious time in the scene and show everybody the wonderful ideas I had for new pieces of art. What initially stopped me from doing so was a gradual understanding of the way the scene evolved, or rather disintegrated into fractions. Recent events such as the disappointing contents of TP7's graphics competition, the introduction of a web-page called "The No-Copy?-page" and other events somehow proved to be the final drop that tipped over the balance for me. To make my point clear, I'll start from the beginning... When I started out in the scene back in 1992, the whole scanning business wasn't even an issue. Hardly anyone had even heard of that form of technology. Nowadays it seems the other way around. Where there's competition, there's bad, average, good, better, best, also in the demo scene. As the scene-pictures in general became better and better, it became harder for the any artist in general to keep up and stay on top. The lesser artists disappeared out of the charts or just kept releasing pictures of lesser quality... At the same time however the Software and Hardware industry kept making improvements too. Better art programs were made but more importantly scanners and digitizer prizes dropped way down to the point where the average financial income could afford them. Therefore people started buying them. After all, what better way is there to show your friends your holiday snaps, and oh boy, isn't it fun to scan in photos of people and mess around with them, giving them giant mustaches and pimpled faces. Joy all around. But there are always the smart ones amongst the less talented artists struggling to keep up (or perhaps even just starting out in the tough world of the graphics scene). They were thinking "Boy, I wish I could draw like that.. it almost looks like a photograph. Hang on a second... photograph, scanner... I HAVE A CUNNING PLAN! I'll just scan in some bits and pieces of photos, paste them together and retouch it here and there, sign it and people will think I have drawn it. I could be famous.. a V.I.S., my name high in the charts..." Of course, the very first attempts were crude and anyone could spot the difference. However the temptation of wanting to become a respected artist, or in some cases the sheer laziness of other people (even of some otherwise quite capable artists (you know who you are)) seemed too great to ignore. Demos started using scanned art, gfx competitions started showing scanned art, even demo-groups based all of their visuals on scanned-in images... calling it a new form of design. A large part of the scene however could not respect this easy way of producing imagery, and a lot of criticism was aired in the direction of the offenders. The offenders in their turn initially started coming up with lies (claiming they were honest artists, pixeling the whole lot). As the pressure continued to increase, calling for even better and more original art, the lies turned into cleverly constructed excuses that bent the rules and definitions the art scene had created on its evolutionary path. Keep saying those excuses long enough, and their acceptance will gain ground. And so they did. Thus, the scene got divided into three areas: those who had accepted the use of digital fakery, those who opposed to it, and those who just did not care either way. There only remained one step to get to the point where we are now at the time that I write this (the first month of 1998). There are quite a number of artists (even some famous ones that get much respect) that have practiced so long on making a scanned image look hand drawn, that their lame efforts have become almost undetectable. There is almost no way of telling if the image is created through blood, sweat, and tears, or the powers of modern-day technology. Usually, an artist falsely accused of scanning could prove his innocence by showing the 'work in progress' -- steps he had saved along the way of the creation process. Now there are groups of scanning people that backtrack their picture and create in-between steps from a retouched scan. Erasing certain parts to black, drawn a sketch line here and there, you get the point. If people go to such lengths to cover up their lies to steal away the respect people have from honest artists, then the fun for me in the scene is over. Another thing is that for many people the use of a scanner has become so accepted that they see absolutely nothing wrong with the use of it. Often, their opinion is that art can be created in any way. This is certainly true and I won't argue with that. But what I can't get out of my mind is that this new media is so popular with people that have little or no talent for drawing in the first place. For me, art is about two things. 1. The feeling of it. Making art is just a very relaxing and (to me) rewarding feeling. It's also a way to express your feelings. 2. The challenge of competing with other artists from your genre. The challenge of trying to be one of the best, to create the ultimate picture. Art becomes interesting when you can combine those two things successfully. I have yet to see a scan and retouched picture in the scene that managed to capture those two things successfully together. If you happen to go and venture into new areas of creating art, fine, but do it with honesty and determination to make something special of the medium. Otherwise don't bother, cos you won't stand out of the bland and grey majority. Art is something special, a bland and grey majority isn't! Scanning in photos of people and doing some weird things here and there and running some filters over it may feel good and allow you to express your feelings. But it isn't special. It doesn't take true determination. Anyone can do it that way. Scanning in photos and drawing on top of them, or retouching them into a hand drawn look and claiming you drew them MIGHT require a LITTLE form of talent, but it isn't honest and should NOT feel good. You only fool yourself in the end. What people ALWAYS seem to forget is that art can come in so many different forms. Even with using scanners. However, I have yet to see a picture that was scanned and pasted and filtered together that set a standard unreachable by others. And that is why I don't take this medium seriously. All this that I have just described is so clear to me and somehow it seems to be so UNclear to the scene. There is so much debate going on about this, so much misunderstanding, so much lying, cheating and basically downright crap pictures being made, that this outweighs the fun and good things there are about the scene. I did my best to come up with quality pictures, to set new standards for the scene. I know quite a lot of people enjoy my efforts. However, more and more often I get attacked on IRC by scene-newbies just fresh from a visit to the no-copy? page. Telling me I'm a fake, that I scan and that I'm no real artist. Considering the many many hours I've spent drawing my graphics for the scene, this hurts. So naturally I try and defend myself. However, the moment I engage in a conversation with these people to try and let them know they're wrong, they tell me I MUST be guilty because 'the truth hurts' as they put it. If I don't engage in a conversation with them they claim I'm ignoring them because 'the truth hurts'... Now what am I supposed to do with that?! This is truly a situation where I can never win, simply because the scene is being flooded by newbies who never knew the roots of the scene. I can't bring myself to spend time drawing graphics for a scene that is losing its mind. As I mentioned earlier in this article, another thing that has bothered me is the whole copy/no copy attitude. Yes, I copied work of artists such as Boris Vallejo and Don Lawrence, but I did it for reasons that every good artist has copied work of of other artists. To learn, to see and to help find your own style. When I found mine, I stopped using other peoples' drawings and paintings as a source of inspiration. I began to find my own inspiration in ordinary things around me, photos in the media, shows on TV, whatever. Then all of the sudden along comes the aforementioned web-page... the "No-Copy? page". Displaying an artist's work alongside the reference material they've used. Nothing wrong with that. I personally found it quite an interesting site to watch. However, there are always those narrow-minded, short-sighted people that are negatively influenced by this. They immediately "label" the artists displayed there as lame copy cats, unable to do anything by themselves. They are totally forgetting that for countless generations artists have always used forms of reference to aid in the creation of their works of art. Totally forgetting that EVERY ARTIST COPIES! The only difference is that one might use a photograph, the other a living model, and yet another the trees he or she is surrounded by. Would you claim that Rembrandt was a copy cat when he had all those people lined up when he painted his "Nightwatch" painting? Or would he be a copy cat even when he painted his own reflection in the mirror while working on his famous self portrait? Monet a lame copy cat, sitting in the middle of nature merely copying the things around him. Boris Vallejo a lame fake artist because he has his on photo studio in his house so that he can take photos of his models that aid him when he does his paintings? If that's your opinion then consider every artist that has every lived to be lame! (Except for maybe the odd modern artist that considers an entirely blue canvas a work of art). The fact is, everybody is inspired by the world around him or her. Where do you draw the line? When is something considered acceptable and the other unacceptable? What is copying and what is not? Often times people say they have more respect for people that use no reference at all (whatever the hell that might mean, after all even memory is reference). The fact is that it's just another GENRE. Just like model drawing, or landscape painting, or whatever. Like any method, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Again, it's not HOW you do it, but it's what you ACHIEVE with it. That's what separates artists from non-artists. And again, I have yet to see a picture in the scene that was drawn without reference (from the mind) that managed to impress me. Another worrying thing is that computer artists like myself, who draw everything down to the last detail by hand, have a very very hard time struggling against the scanners. There's no other form of art that has a similar situation. For instance, a conventional painter will never be accused of sticking a photograph on his canvas simply because he just wouldn't get away with it. It's too easy to spot. And if he would, he just wouldn't be taken seriously as a painter. In the world of computers just about everything is much more easily achievable in ways of art by letting a mechanical process do it for you. That also brings me back to the rest of the scene. The reason why the focus is so much on the individual graphics artists is that they are incredibly easy to keep track of. Perhaps the focus should be on the entire scene instead of the artists alone. Many coders take shitloads of info and source code from books written on the subject. I mean, go to any bookstore and you can find shelves full of books on how to code specific routines. Even your basic phong shading routine can be found in there. And what about the issue of source code ripping. How many times have we seen a demo display a wicked and highly original new effect. So original that it was incredibly difficult to even conceive. And then a month or so afterwards other demos started showing similar effects, only to be followed by more and more copies of that effect. Within the space of half a year, all the demos feature this effect. Now Hang on a sec... Wasn't that effect so radical? So revolutionary? So difficult to come up with that no one else has ever done it before? So how come that all of the sudden after one coder introduced it, all the other coders seem to have come up with the same ingenious idea in the short span of only a few months?! Does this strike you as incredibly suspicious or am I the only one? I'll tell you what it is, it's another form of copying! And perhaps this form of copying stinks just as badly as scanning and retouching. I'm sure there are some clever coders out there that just need to see an effect to understand how it was done. But we all know that it's a fact that most coders don't stop at that. One looks at just the effect itself, another peeks at the source code, and the next one starts ripping the code. Or what about musicians? How many times have musicians sampled whole parts of CDs or records?. Or use sample CDs? CDs filled with the sounds of all sorts of musical instruments and sound effects. Or hook up a sampler to a synthesizer and get their instrument samples like that? And then they always claim that they do their own samples. What would be their own then? The fact that they took the time to get it out of a keyboard and into a Fast-Tracker sample? If you demand from artists not to use any form of reference, how would this translate to musicians? Create all your own sounds by constructing waveforms by hand, and just using your memory on what a guitar sounds like? Of course not, no one does that. Consider music "styles". I remember times when new styles of music such as rap, techno, trance, jungle, Drum 'n Bass etc. got popular with the crowd. The scene musicians where very quick to pick this up (or should I say copy?). My point is that everybody copies. Some do it to learn, others do it to grasp a bit of fame in a very challenging environment. It's not just the artists that copy, it's the whole bloody scene. And everyone that makes any form of art. Artists just get all the crap for it because it's easiest to spot. The scene should be looking itself in the face... As an artist, I have copied from other artists IN THE PAST just to learn to do my own stuff now, here, at Eidos. I wouldn't have been asked to join Eidos and to come up with high quality pictures for marketing purposes for their hit game Tomb Raider 2 if I didn't have what it takes. I wouldn't be at Eidos if I was merely capable of copying other artists as some people in the scene claim. At least in the professional industry artists are being treated as they should be. People know what they are talking about. I'm afraid I cannot always say the same thing about the scene. If people agree with what I have just stated, then I hope they take a bit of notice. I have no intention of trying to change the scene other than by trying to open up its eyes and putting some facts straight. On a final note I'd like to state that there still are a lot of good things about the scene. Like friendship for instance. I'll still be reachable on IRC once and a while (if you can find me that is :) to spend quality chatting time with my friends and EX-TBL groupmates. I hope you all enjoyed the graphics... Cheers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Coding Mathematics Part 3" :: Tiberius (Richard Nichols) / Inspire Media - tiberius@mailhost.net _____Introduction In this issue we'll look at rotation of two dimensional vectors. We'll derive an equation that we can use to rotate an arbitrary vector and I'll even give you some example source code to show how we can use what we've just learned. _____Trig Is Cool Okay if we're gonna do this proof you're going to need some basic trig identities. I'll list more than we'll actually use because they'll be useful later on as well. Here goes... sin(A+B) = sinA.cosB + cosA.sinB sin(A-B) = sinA.cosB - cosA.sinB cos(A+B) = cosA.cosB - sinA.sinB cos(A-B) = cosA.cosB + sinA.sinB (cosA)^2+(sinA)^2 = 1 From those we can derive: sin2A = 2.sinA.cosA cos2A = (cosA)^2 - (sinA)^2 (cosA)^2 = 0.5(cos2A + 1) (sinA)^2 = 0.5(cos2A - 1) Most of those were from memory so I hope I got them right =) I'll let you work them out yourselves. hehe. _____What Are We Trying To Do Let's start with a diagram of a vector coming from the origin. ^ | | | ... | ..... | ..... | .... |... a O--------------------> 'a' is the angle between the x axis and the vector. Now we want to rotate that vector from it's current position to a new position like so: ^^<--x-->. .| . .| . .| R . .... y| . R .... ^ .| .b .... | .| . .... h .|... a | vO--------------------> <--------g--------> Just to clarify (damn ascii!), b is the angle between the two vectors (the one that we are rotating by), g and h are the i and j components of the current vector and x and y are the i and j components of the resulting vector, the one we are looking for. 'R' is the length of the vectors. If I were a math teacher I'd prolly state the problem as 'express x and y in terms of only b, g and h'. But I'm not so I'll just start. =) x = R.cos(a+b) and y = R.sin(a+b) g = R.cos(a) and h = R.sin(a) We can see those two things from the diagram. Now we can substitute for the COSes and SINes (a+b): x = R(cosAcosB - sinAsinB) = RcosAcosB - RsinAsinB But! ---> R.cosA is 'g' AND R.sinA is 'h'. So we substitute: x = g.cosB - h.sinB I'll let you figure it out for 'y' yourself. It's the same thing basically. You should get: y = g.sinA + h.cosB _____Putting It All Together Okay now we've done the hard part. Let's rearrange the equations into something more meaningful: rotated 'x' = oldx*cos(angle) - oldy*sin(angle) rotated 'y' = oldx*sin(angle) + oldy*cos(angle) So if we are rotating a vector with coordinates (oldx,oldy) by angle we can now work it out! Pretty simple wasn't it? _____Application What cool stuff can we do with this new information? Well we can rotate a point on the screen if you like. Here's a snippet of code to rotate the point (4, 3) around and around: Pascal: repeat { start } newx := round(4*cos(angle) - 3*sin(angle)); { calculate the } newy := round(4*sin(angle) + 3*cos(angle)); { point } putpixel(newx, newy, 15); { plot it to screen } delay(20); { wait a moment } angle := angle+0.01; { add to angle } putpixel(newx, newy, 0); { erase old dot } until keypressed; { back to the start } C: while(!kbhit()) // start { newx = 4*cos(angle) - 3*sin(angle); // rotate the point newy = 4*sin(angle) + 3*cos(angle); putpixel(newx, newy, 15); // draw a dot delay(20); // wait a moment angle += 0.01; // add to the angle putpixel(newx, newy, 0); // erase old dot before } // we start over _____Homework Homework this week is a little different than normal. You should write a program that uses the derived equations to rotate a small bitmap on the screen. Do this by rotating each pixel in the image. Hint: If the bitmap seems to get 'holes' in it, trying rotating by a negative angle back into the bitmap for every point in the destination image. Next issue [whatever form it might take] I'll upload a possible solution to hornet.org in assembler and Pascal and maybe C. Answers to part 2: Q1. (a) i + j + k (b) 2i + 6j + k (c) -i + 2j Q2. (a) 4i + 4j - 5k (b) -i + j + 2k (c) i - j - 2k (d) -2j + 6k (e) 2j - 6k (f) -i + j + 2k Q3. (a)i) 1.5i - j - 2k (ii) 12i - 8j - 16k (b)i) 1.5j + k (ii) 12j + 8k _____Conclusion Next issue we'll delve into the world of matrix mathematics, work out how we can use them and why we do it. See you then! If you have any comments/suggestions/fixes/gifts then send them to me via email. Until the next part! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "ASCII Adjust For Division" :: Submissive / Cubic + $een - submissive@cubic.org _____Introduction Hi assembly-fans. I just found a really cool assembly-trick. I'm speaking about the two more or less useless instructions AAM and AAD which are used when you work with BCD packed numbers and perform divisions and multiplications. I played around with them and found out, that you can modify the behavior and make them really useful. _____AAD: ASCII Adjust For Division Intel tells us, that this instruction should work this way: al = al + ah * 10 ah = 0 (assumed, that each nibble of al and ah is in 0..9) The funny thing is, that it doesn't only work with nibbles up to 9 but with any binary number. Now, you can use it to multiply a 8 bit value with 10.. That's a fine instruction.. and it gets even better! You can also change one of the operands to any 8 bit value you want to use. It's a undocumented behavior and it works this way: The normal AAD instruction assembles to D5 0A Now guess what happens, when you change the 0A to another value? Right! It changes the operand 10! Example: D5 10 : al = al + ah * 16 ah = 0 D5 03 : al = al + ah * 3 ah = 0 _____AAM: ASCII Adjust For Multiplication AAM is a little bit a counterpart of AAD. Intel documented it like this: al = al mod 10 ah = al div 10 Like AAD AAM also works with any binary number.. and you can change the operand like we did it with AAD: AAM assembles to D4 0a. Example: D4 10 : al = al mod 16 ah = al div 16 D4 03 : al = al mod 3 ah = al div 3 This instruction is even more useful than AAD. For example, when you work with midi-notes and you want to calculate the octave and halftone from a note you have to calculate div 12 and mod 12. This can now be done with AAM. _____Conclusion One drawback is that these instruction are relative slow. However, they are two byte instructions and are very useful for size-optimization. I was only able to test this on a non-MMX intel processor, but I think the other processors will also do the same (I would be glad to get a email if someone has a cpu where this trick doesn't work). Happy Coding! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Pipe Generation From Arbitrary Shapes" :: Ranganathan - kandr@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in _____Introduction I am describing a method to generate pipes in arbitrary shapes given the equation of the curve. For example, given a circle, a torus would be generated and given a straight line, a hollow cylinder would be generated. Deriving the equations is intuitive when we work in 2D like for line and circle. Unfortunately, we cannot visualize the rotations needed to generate pipes in 3D shapes like a helical pipe etc. We need to model the situation mathematically and then work on the model. I hope this article emphasizes that pure intuition alone is insufficient and that formal math methods are extremely useful. _____Generating Arbitrary Pipes I realized long ago that a strong grasp of mathematics and 3D geometry is very important for demo coders. I consider mathematics to be as important as clock-cycle-pinching for writing successful demos. After reading the plans for the vector tutorial, I thought I could write an article explaining with a real-life example. Now let me define the problem. We want to generate pipes in any shape. We are given a 3D curve's equation in parametric form. _____Quick Primer On Parametric Equations x = f(t); y = g(t); z = h(t) (x, y, z) represents the coordinates of a point. The complete curve is calculated by letting t vary from a starting value to a final value. A circle would be represented by x = R*cos(t), y = R*sin(t) where t would range from 0 to 2*PI. The various points on the curve are calculated by letting t move from 0 to 2*PI with desired steps. I bet we have all written our first circle program using that method before we came to know about Bresenham's algorithm etc. _____Back To Arbitrary Pipes Now we want to generate a pipe in the shape of this curve. If we are given a straight line, we would generate a hollow cylinder and given a circle, we would generate a torus. (I hope the examples explain what I am trying to do.) The basic idea can be developed by working with the hollow cylinder. It can be generated by taking a line. Then take a circle (let's call this the generating circle, GC), placing it such that the plane in which it lies is perpendicular to the line. Then translate it along the line and join corresponding points of the adjacent GC. This is known as a "sold of translation". Now let's get to a torus. Imagine the torus to be lying in the XY plane. The torus can be generated as a cylinder was. We have a circle in the XY plane corresponding to the torus. Now we place the GCs at various points on the circle such that it is perpendicular to the XY plane and join corresponding points. However, here not only do we need to translate the center of the GC, but we also need to rotate it about the Z axis and then connect the corresponding points. A note about the rotation. We need to rotate the GC about its "local axes". Remember that we are going to be away from the origin. Local axes means that we rotate about a line passing though the center of the GC and parallel to the world Z axis. How much do we need to rotate the circle? Intuitively, we can see that we place the GC such that the plane in which it lies it is perpendicular to the circle at any point. More mathematically, the normal to the GC is tangent to the curve at any point. _____Important! This is a critical point. At any point on the curve, the GC must be placed such that the normal to the plane which it lies is along the tangent to the curve at that point. _____Back To Arbitrary Pipes The physical explanation is that the GCs track the curve closely at every point. It is easy to program these steps for the torus because we work in 2D. The normals had only the X and Y components. So rotation about local axes etc could be done intuitively in a single step like: for ( theta=0.0; theta < 2*PI; theta += 0.2 ) { local_origin_x = r*cos(theta); local_origin_y = r*sin(theta); angle_to_rotate = theta; generate_circle( local_origin_x, local_origin_y, angle_to_rotate ); connect_corresponding_point(); } When we get to 3D, things get tricky. Say you want a helix shaped pipe. It becomes difficult to visualize the orientation of the GCs and write down the mathematical expression for the orientation of the GC. This is where we can apply math. If we can describe the situation mathematically, then we can work it out instead of relying on intuition. Remember, that we have already described it mathematically. (See the "IMPORTANT" paragraph above). At each point, we need to find the direction of the tangent at that point. Then we place the GC such that its normal is along the tangent. How do we find the direction of the tangent? From basic calculus, we know that the first derivative of a curve (dy/dx) is the slope of the curve. This is for a plane curve. When we are working in 3D, we can represent the direction of the tangent by a vector (see vector tut by Tiberius). We know the equation in parametric form, in terms of the parameter t. So the components of the tangent are just the derivatives of the functions for the three coordinates with respect to t. (i.e. dx/dt etc) We step along every point on the curve and at every point, we find the "direction cosines" (DCs) of the tangent at that point. Since we know the equation of the curve in parametric form, the DCs are found by: Original curve: x = f(t), y = g(t), z = h(t) DRs of normals: ( f'(t), g'(t), h'(t) ) == (l, m, n) (The notation x'(t) refers to the first derivative of the function x) _____Quickie On DCs Any line in 3D points in a certain direction and can be represented as a vector xi + yj + zk. (The i is supposed to have a caret (called 'cap') about it.) It is read "x i cap plus y j cap plus ..." Where i, j, k are "unit vectors" along the X, Y, Z axes. x, y, z can be normalized by dividing each by sqrt( x^2 + y^2 + z^2 ). The normalized values are called DCs. The unnormalized values are called directional ratios (DRs). _____Back To Arbitrary Pipes OK, we now know along which direction we have to align the normal. We start out with a GC centered at the origin and lying in the YZ plane. First we translate the center to the current point in the curver. (That's easy :-) ) The GC's normal points along the positive X axis. Here comes the difficult part. We need to rotate this normal so that it points along the tangent. This is the critical part where we use formal methods instead of intuition. To visualize the direction of the tangent, imagine the DC as a line with one end at the origin and the other at (l, m, n). Now imagine it casting a shadow on the XY plane ( that is, below it ). The angle this makes with the X axis is theta = arctan(m/l). Now imagine the shadow on the YZ plane. The angle this shadow makes with the Y axis is phi = arctan(n/m). We can now align a vector initially aligned along the X axis along the DCs. Rotate the line first about the Z axis by theta and then about the X axis by phi. Surprise, surprise! The GC's normal is along positive X. We apply the two rotations to get the required alignment. That's it! Now we have a bullet-proof generic algorithm to position the GCs with the correct orientation. Now the algorithm is: for ( t=init_value; t < final_value; t += increment ) { x = f(t); y = g(t); z = h(t); DRx = f'(t); DRy = g'(t); DRz = h'(t); divide = sqrt( DRx^2 + DRy^2 + DRz^2 ); l = DRx/divide; m = DRy/divide; n = DRz/divide; // direction of tangent theta = arctan( m/l ); phi = arctan( n/m ); generate_circle_centred_at_origin_normal_along_X_axis(); rotate_circle_Z_axis( theta ); rotate_circle_X_axis( phi ); translate_circle( x, y, z ); connect_corresponding_points(); } _____What Am I Trying To Say? 1. When intuition s too tough, try formal math. (Some physics theories use the four-dimensional "space time" to explain stuff. Stephen Hawking assures in "A Brief History of Time" that it is impossible to visualize 4D space-time and goes on to mention that he personally finds it difficult to visualize 3D. It exists only on equations. ) 2. Don't be afraid of math. It's tool behind all those cool effects you see in demos. _____Miscellany I've worked this all out on paper and solved in C. Do programs like Mathematica, MathCAD help to solve this kind of problems? I am interested to know. _____Conclusion I am not an expert demo coder and don't claim to be one. I am a huge fan of demos however. Much as I am awed by the mindblowing, fast, cool effects in demos, I admire also the creativity that went into thinking up the (mostly) irreverent "scenes" in which to display them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Jason, The Man, The Musician, The Story" :: roboMOP / Imphobia - mop@thepentagon.com Ninja 2 and Outside are two pearls of scene craziness. These two demos come from the Norwegian bands of Melon Design, unbeaten masters of scene-innovation on many platforms; and from Scoop, a solid group worth it's name. Inside the Norwegian demo factory of Melon, DemoNews meets Jason, musician of high calibre that has been present in the demo scene since the dawn of time. Jason has been a member of numerous groups during his long scene life. Since we don't really care about his history in the Amiga scene, we can say that his adventure in the PC world starts with his joining of the software house FUNCOM. Jason himself explains his feelings on the first time that he was approached by Funcom; "The expectations were actually quite high, taken in consideration that the first game I should have scored was a Spielberg license for SEGA. I was quite nervous about whether I was ABLE to actually sort out all the technicalities that come along with making music on such a limited system as the SEGA Genesis" All went pretty smooth for Jason, who received fulfilling comments from people within the business. During his stay at Funcom, Jason has been involved in numerous winning projects - Daze Before Christmas, Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, Jack Nicklaus' Golf, Nightmare Circus, Impact Racing, Casper and Pocahontas - but alas, he and his fellows never saw any real big money. "Our expectations of wealth dropped drastically", nods Jason, who also speaks for his friends Joachim and Heatseeker, members of the same Melon Design. Jason adds that he was actually quite lucky with the geographical situation when he was given the opportunity to move over to Funcom. "At the time, I was living with my parents just some 20 minutes outside Oslo city. I kept on living at home for some months, but found out that I wanted to move somewhat closer to the company HQ" In the summer of 1994 Jason moved into a 4 story house together with graphician Joachim and Alta (an old Amiga coder of Rebels fame). Other known sceners occasionally moved in and out of this habitation since there was much room to spare. Jogeir Liljedahl of Pulse, Oistein Eide of MON, Mack and Walt (also from Melon France), all had a bed in some corner, at one time or another. "During the first months I had much to learn but little time to spare. I used to stay in late and even got myself a little bed in the office", says Jason who also mentions that this was done on his own initiative without anyone forcing him in any way. However here one must understand that Funcom (a company driven by people who knew the whereabouts of the scene) wanted sceners as employees for this same specific reason; they knew that demo artists can do the humanly impossible to achieve the best end results, and try to reach big doses of ego stimulation. "I must say that it was extremely rewarding to earn a living by doing what I LOVE to do together with my own friends, so I was pretty happy with the situation nevertheless. On a typical day I would come in at around ten in the morning, grab a cup of coffee and stroll up to my office. There I would mount up and initialize the necessary equipment and start to work. When working with the SEGA system much of my time was spent on trying to make credible sounds with the lousy Genesis FM chip. Only 30% of the time was spent composing, while the rest went down in sweat-dripping parameter tweaking", explains Jason. It must be said that the Funcom sceners were actually free to progress at the pace they wanted. "No one would come in with a whip, if some friends were lying on the floor discussing life. But we all had responsibilities in connection to deadlines, so work was mostly important". During their time at Funcom, Jason says that most of the sceners were so happy with their new financial situation that they couldn't care less about the demo scene. Jason tells DemoNews how some sceners from his band tried to keep the scene-spirit alive, "but it is so hard, when you work with computers all day long". "I don't feel that I was being used by the company because they got what they wanted and I got useful experience. A healthy exchange, I think. When I first started, I was earning USD 25,000. I was only 19 years old and really happy. However when we started to look at other firms, we found out that we earned somewhat less than the average than what is usually paid by English and American companies. This started to bug us after two years of solid work at Funcom, as we were still not earning more than USD 31,000. Yes, we were paid adequately, but not enough compared to our overseas friends", comments Jason. As an end result, 11 good friends, who wanted to see more of the money that walks in this industry, decided to give a new turn to their professional lives. "First we tried to cut some kind of deal with Funcom, but naturally they turned it down, and off we went to form DiMaga Productions. Along side of us, six other sceners resigned from Funcom and moved over to DMA Design". Jason says that they had some really hard times, setting up their company from scratch, and build it up as it is today. Both the DMA and DiMaga teams had some rather serious changes in plans during 1996 and 97, ending up in ONE merged company with 17 employees, nowadays known as Innerloop Studios. The Norwegian company will publish all their work under the EIDOS Interactive label. When asked about the life of the games musician, when compared to that of the demo one, Jason explains to DemoNews; "I must admit that today, scene musicians have a scary future. Some years ago, they had the advantage to possess the rare knowledge of creating computer music, but these days companies want REAL music and this results in rough competition for most scores. Imagine Capcom, listening to potential demo material from Jogeir and John Williams... what a laugh!" With offices located in the center of Oslo, just across the parliament building, sceners like Joachim, Adept, Mikael and Jason himself (all from Melon), spend their days making games without having to care about managerial problems. A games company with the true scene spirit. As Jason explains, their work place is divided into 3 main project rooms, 2 games rooms, a network area, the producer's office, a sound studio, and the obligatory reception. "We're all working on Pentium Pro 200s and in addition we have invested over USD 47,000 in sound equipment", says Jason. No wonder that our Jason makes good and audible music then! As of today the team has not released any games yet, but the first title to hit the shelves this autumn will be JSF. An action adventure and one sports game will follow. During this same period, Ninja 2 and Outside saw the light of the scene. "Basically all our scene-doings are meant just for fun. It may sound strange, but most of the motivation comes from the added excitement we get at parties when entering a demo competition. Normally we sit in a hotel drinking beer, but when we know that we have a demo in the contest, it's much more fun to go in, join the party and watch the big screen", concludes a smiling Jason. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "A New Hope" :: Trixter / Hornet - trixter@hornet.org _____Introduction As the PC Demoscene nears its 10th year in existence and as DemoNews draws to a close, all of us at Hornet are struck with nostalgia and sadness at the end of something we contributed to for over 5 years. But the decision was fairly mutual -- the scene is taking a different direction; from style to comfort, from bare metal coding to C++ libraries, from original and new effects to 3D keyframed scenes. It is, for the hardcore oldskool sceners, truly the end of an era. _____Or is it? Those of you who know me may recognize me for my (sadly unfinished) line of "VGA Hardware Tricks" articles, or my regular presence on comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos for the last five years, or for my GRIND player. And if you know me, you know how for the last two years I've been preaching the demise of the demoscene, complaining about the recent lack of design, the obsession with Windows 95 and 3D accelerators, and a complete disregard for optimization. And I won't back down from that -- you know I'm right, and you don't want to admit it. But just to show you that I can be (and always have been) objective, I'm going to cast a ray of hope into the crowd and hope it hits somebody. A ray of hope that may keep the true oldskool scene spirit alive into the millennium, and beyond. That ray? 64K intros. _____Demo Nuggets Yes, let's repeat it again: "64K intros." Think about it: 64K intros are the perfect nugget of true scene spirit: Small size, optimized code, optimized music, graphics, and a pinch of style and design -- all packed into 64K. You simply *cannot* be a lamer if you want to make a 64K intro -- people will laugh outright at your result. Only the best of the best can pull off a 64K intro; in fact, the very best ones are created by long-time sceners. And for people afraid of Windows being the progression of the scene (like me), you can't make a Microsoft Windows executable (*with* music, mind you) that fits in 64K. Lasse Reinbong, for example, was a 64K intro that won The Party, but redone as a Windows program it takes up 116K (and that's compressed with pkzip -- normal .exe size is 423K). 64K intros represent the same scene spirit that we saw during the demoscene's "renaissance period" (1992-1994). Back then, presentation was fresh, effects were original, people *optimized*, and even a few scene tricks were involved (remember Dope?). It was light, it was fluffy, it was hardcore, and it was *fun*. It may have been elitism, but "silent" elitism -- you were the best of the best if you created works of art. While that same elitism is mostly gone from the demoscene, it lives on in 64K intros. _____Why 64k Intros? Think about it: If you're writing a 64K intro, you're already doing it to impress. You don't put yourself through the agony if your heart isn't into the whole project. In 64K, you usually have four options: - Music: Make the music amazing for 64K - Graphics: pack a ton of graphics or animation into 64K - Code: pack new, optimized, or tons routines into 64K - Style/Design: If size optimization is not your strong point Either way, it's going to look good. And a select few are able to perform the miracle of the fifth option: Pack all four into 64K. They're rare, but they're out there. _____Selected Viewing Don't believe me? Think the demoscene is unstoppably imploding, or intros are a waste of effort? Then take a look at some of these; many would win lesser *demo* compos. And don't tell me you don't have the bandwidth -- these are 64K apiece, for goodness sake: filename.zip Emphasis Why you should see it ------------ -------- --------------------- lithium.zip Everything A *wicked* intro. The code is quite fast. Vista is one group to watch for in the future. jlantani.zip Code One of the most impressive real-time raytracing demos I've ever seen, supporting 24-bit color and a host of options. Don't miss this one! val_btc.zip Music Some interesting texture manipulations, and a lot of music for 64K. Also Valhalla's last intro. tpolmbjo.zip Code Splines are cool, and so is this intro. Except that this intro is 10 times cooler than splines. powa.zip Style/Design Elite humor, fast code, and good font routines. Can't ask for much more than that. plysform.zip Code Absolutely *wicked* fast blur on a cube in the middle of the intro. mfx_2g.zip Code Realtime raytracing from 216 again, but with colored lighting and bi-linear texture filtering. This dude scares me -- I can catch some of his tricks, but not all of them. Great, great respect to 216. And there's even a cute reference to Transgression if you look hard. influv2f.zip Graphics Amazing visuals -- the most graphics I've ever seen packed into 64K intro. Can you figure it out? (Hint: trilinear filtering) fdg_pg11.zip Everything The best particle system of 1997, hands down. And some new bitmap effects -- kiss your 3D accelerator goodbye. stash.zip Everything I think it's official: The Black Lotus kicks serious ass. Unless you can compress 4MB+ of data into 64K... The only think keeping this program in the intro category is it's size. pls_sink.zip Everything Long precalc time, but totally worth the wait. Has an excellent trick/compromise to real-time raytracing that looks fantastic; the music fidelity is also surprisingly high. They may take our DOS away and force us to write demos in DirectX, but they can't take our 64K intros away. In 64K intros, the true scene lives on, and as long as 64K intro compos stick around, the scene will live on. _____Conclusion Viva la intro, and maybe I'll see you in the next century. Take care. (PS: For an example of *true* scene spirit, download In The Kitchen '97 by Rednex (rnxitk97.zip). It's a remix of a 5-year-old Amiga demo. It's also a testament to how important design is in a demo -- it's much more enjoyable to watch than many recent demos, and the music/code is over 5 years old! If you wonder why people talk about the oldskool flava so fondly, *THIS IS WHY*. Get this and make sure you watch it with the nocensor option -- and maybe you'll understand. Maybe.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Interview With Snowman" :: Ryan Cramer / Renaissance - rc@di.net _____Introduction Hey folks. I'm back. After a long two-year sabbatical, roaming around in the woods and mountains of the Shenandoah Valley, I'm back! I won't go in-depth about my journey, except to say that I got lost for a very, very long time. Ever see "The Edge"? For those who don't remember me, I used to write a lot of articles and do a number of interviews and reviews for DemoNews. See DemoNews issues 70 and tons of them after that. I also did a lot of music as a member of both Renaissance and Iguana. Unfortunately, I've come back and it seems like the demo scene just isn't what it used to be. My group (Renaissance) no longer seems to be "active" and Second Reality still seems to be the most talked about demo. My trusted 386-33 doesn't even seem to be adequate to run today's demos. Everyone I talk to snickers when I mention DOS. Future Crew's latest production (Final Reality) runs under Windows (???) and requires some sort of 3D card (???). Even worse, Gravis no longer makes the GUS (my savior!), and people have gone back to using ShitBlasters (aka SpamBlasters aka ShitCrappers aka SoundBastards). What has the world come to!? While it looks like the demo scene is not as interesting or active as it used to be, there are a lot of exciting things going on in the industry. I imagine that the demo scene was just a starting point for all of us. There are so many more opportunities for computer artists to express themselves these days. However, I've yet to see a medium that requires the extensive mix of technical and artistic skill as the demo scene. Don't get me wrong though, the scene still rocks (but the SoundBastard still sucks). Before I go much further, I wanted to mention that I'm releasing a music disk probably this week or next. It contains three new songs by me (XMs). Keep an eye out on ftp.cdrom.com for them, or visit my web site at http://www.di.net/ryan/ -- I'll post it there when its done. This will be the first Renaissance '98 release (did we release anything in '97?, or '96 for that matter?) With that said, I'm glad that I made it back to civilization in time to contribute to this final issue of DemoNews. I've interviewed a lot of the big names in the scene over the years (see some back issues from 1994, 1995), but for this last issue, I thought it would be very appropriate to interview the person responsible for keeping DemoNews going over the many years, Christopher G. Mann (Snowman). He's also the organizer of the Music Contests, and he maintains The Hornet Archive, which IMO is one of the best resources on the net for the demo scene. He's also a musician and a coder. On to the interview... _____The Interview (conducted on 01 Feb 1998) rcramer: When and where did you get your start in the scene? What demo or piece of music got you interested in the scene? As I recall, we met online at The Sound Barrier (Renaissance WHQ) probably in '93 in the real-time chat mode. It doesn't seem that long ago really, but it's amazing how things have changed since then (particularly the Internet.) Feel free to expand about this time period. Snowman: Back in early 1992, I was just a high school Junior in a tiny little mid-western USA town. A friend of mine kept trying to convince me to buy a soundcard for my computer. "Why?", I said, "it can already make noises and beeps." Then he showed me the difference between the PC Speaker and a Sound Blaster with a couple games he had (Populus and King's Quest). The next week, I went out and spent $240 for the newly released Sound Blaster Pro (which could actually play in STEREO!). Over the next few weeks, he brought over some floppies full of .mid's, .rol's, and .cmf's. My computer suddenly switched from something I could just write school reports on to something I could play music on in my spare time. Even with those hundreds of songs that pushed the Sound Blaster FM chips to the limits, I found my hunger growing. I had another nerdy friend who was a whiz with modems and showed me how to call up the Canton Connection BBS. It took a while, but eventually I figured out Zmodem and the whole downloading phenomena. While browsing through some of the file bases, I came across a section labeled "MODs and Music". At first I used assumed that MOD was another format like the MID/ROL/CMF files I was used to. So I downloaded my first mod -- FYC.MOD (a remix of the song "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals) -- but none of the players I had worked. Luckily there was also a copy of "ModPlay v2.19B" on the BBS. From the instant I started playing that MOD, I noticed an incredible difference. FM music sounded so cheezy in comparison. It wasn't long before I was downloading every MOD I could find on The Canton Connection, carefully zipping and cataloging them all onto floppy disk. It would be another year before I came to realize that there were enough MODs out there that I didn't have to keep every single one no matter how bad it was. I recall the Christmas '92 BBS party we had at Denny's. The fileop of the "MODs" base was MusicMan. When I talked to him, he sounded disinterested in continuing to maintain the area. So I offered to take it over since he was getting tired of it. But he didn't want to lose the "fileop" title, so he let the area continue to become outdated rather than letting me take a stab at working on it. This was a source of great turmoil in my life back then. He just let the area get stale while I sat there with 45 carefully labeled 3.5" floppies full of MODs! I was heartbroken, unable to be the official maintainer of a trivial MOD archive on a tiny BBS in a microscopic town in Northeastern Ohio. Hehe.. About the same time, I discovered another file area on TCC called "Demos". From what I gathered, this was a section of game previews that supported soundcards. So I downloaded a couple (Cronologia and Putre Faction). These were NOT game demos. These were totally awesome multimedia -- whoops, the term "multimedia" wasn't popular yet -- graphic/sound productions. They weren't advertising anything. You didn't play them. You didn't pay for them. You just sat back and watched and let your mind get blown away. How did they DO that!? I found a BBS advert in one of the demos for the Sound Barrier BBS in New York. In mid to late 1992 -- in what would become a great source of contention with my father -- I began to make regular long-distance modem calls to demo boards. Once I started making use of the Sound Barrier, my knowledge of the scene increased tremendously. I kept up with the Imphobia charts, downloaded better players and trackers, and was exposed to more demo culture than the Canton Connection BBS was ever likely to give me. I even once tried to call Starport BBS but couldn't seem to complete the call to Finland without some international operator trying to assist. Doh! Otto Chrons was releasing a new version of Dual Module Player every week. It was an incredible day when he added support in DMP for the SBPro. Finally I could hear MODs in stereo! Granted, the channels were HARD right and left, but it WAS stereo. The only thing that could top that was actually giving musicians the ability to specify the panning positions themselves. And one shining DMP day, user-specified panning points had arrived. Improvements in tracking technology seemed much more juicy then. Anyway, that's pretty much how I found the scene and got hooked. Just for the record, Second Reality didn't come out until a year and a half later. rcramer: One of the things that you are most famous for is the Music Contests. Tell us about the progression of these contests. I seem to remember someone trying to steal the idea from you a long time ago (Mike Phillips). That must have been a real pain in the ass. Snowman: By late 1993, I was already entrenched deeply in the music scene. Renaissance seemed to be on the decline and the chances of a North American demo party happening were bleak. But as an active tracker, I really wanted to enter an official party music compo like the Europeans had been doing for years. With a humble college budget my options were limited. I tried giving a presentation to the University of Akron's ACM organization in an attempt to generate interest in the scene from local students. This proved futile. They all seemed to find demos and tracked music interesting, but not enough that they actually wanted to contribute. I had given up hope on ever entering a party music compo. Then one day it dawned on me. Why not have a "virtual" party for musicians? Instead of actually trying to save up USD 1200 to fly over to Europe, have a BBS where everyone could upload their tunes and have them voted on by a few impartial judges. At the time I was a regular on The Sound Barrier BBS (New York), Data Connection (Virginia), Digital Oxygene BBS (Texas), and The Music Connection BBS (also in Texas). The Sound Barrier was probably the most popular American demo board, but the sysop and group leader (Daredevil / Renaissance) wasn't very fond of me at the time. It had been my goal since mid-1992 to become a member of Renaissance. I did everything I could to work myself into their favor. I remember C.C.Catch trying to give me tracking tips and our debates on which was better: SB filter ON or OFF. I registered and became an active user of Composer 669 (Renaissance's tracker, which was the FIRST digital tracker to support more than 4 channels on the PC). I accidentally made out the registration check for Composer 669 to "Renaissance" instead of "Ray Lee" (Mosaic / Renaissance). Mosaic called to ask if a replacement check could be sent. I was star-struck. Imagine, a member of Renaissance actually calling me on the PHONE! But things were about to take a turn for the worse. Yes, I was persistent. I was aggressive. I was a newbie. And I was annoying. One day I uploaded resume.zip to the Sound Barrier (my official application to Renaissance including several songs I'd done). Finally, Daredevil had enough. He called me on the phone, thanked me for my resume, but made it very clear that I was never going to be a member of Renaissance. I was devastated. As I mentioned though, I really needed a popular BBS to host Music Contest and I had just nulled the possibility of using the Sound Barrier. In fact, you'll find the following text in the UPLOAD.TXT file included with the first Music Contest rules: The SOUND BARRIER BBS (sysop: Daredevil/Renaissance) is NOT an upload site! Under no circumstances are you to upload an entry to this contest to the Sound Barrier. I think this was more inspired by my desire not to irritate Daredevil than out of resentment. Of the remaining BBS's, Digital Oxygene seemed the most active so that's where I decided the songs should be uploaded to. Music Contest was a wild success... we had over 20 entries! :) Right before the end of Music Contest (around Christmas of 1993), the sysop of Digital Oxygene (Mike Phillips) vanished. VANISHED. There was no way for me to stop new entries from being uploaded after the deadline, no way to get the word out to our judges, no way to contact Mike and find out what was going on. I was frantic. After the whole Renaissance ordeal my reputation in the scene was tenuous at best. A failed music contest would do little to improve people's confidence in me. I remember those two weeks during Mike's absence as being one of the most stressful and unhappy times I've had in the scene. As it turned out, a relative of Mike's had passed away. Eventually he returned to his post, Music Contest finished up, and everything seemed copacetic again. However, Mike and I were never able to reconcile our differences. Little did I know that while I began work planning Music Contest 2, Mike was secretly working on his own contest, Composers Competition. When I finally found out about his contest, I pretty much lost all hope that there ever would BE a Music Contest 2. I couldn't use Sound Barrier, and the guy responsible for the MC1 World Headquarters had decided to go off on his own. It was essentially a Music Contest Competition (MC2 vs. CC). He took the rules I'd made for MC1, changed a few things around, and come up with the rules for CC. He had a lot of international scene contacts and support from other sysops. There was a buzz in the music scene... "Hey, haven't you heard about Composers Competition?" But Mike was a really friendly guy! He patiently waited until the moment when I was ready to give up on Music Contest 2. Then he called me on the phone and offered me a token job as "rules organizer" for Composers Competition. Awesome! I mean, why hold your own Music Contest 2 when you can be the official Rules Organizer for Composers Competition? Why should I live in the doomed fantasy world of Music Contest? Here I was being given the magical opportunity to contribute to a competition that -- fortunately without my leadership -- would finally see MY original idea actualized. I'd have to be a FOOL to continue with MC2 after the rationale he gave me. For better or worse, I decided to be a fool. And for the next 4 years I would be quite content with the foolish decision I'd made. Epilogue. Despite the interest surrounding Composers Competition, Mike never got around to judging the entries. Over 50 people contributed songs that would end up being lost in the shuffle of tracking history. Two months after the scheduled "entry deadline", when nary a song had been judged, I entered my own joke tune into the compo. I wonder if Mike ever heard it. rcramer: How about the Hornet Archive -- how did you put that whole thing together? Its got features on there that just amaze me (i.e. viewing inside ZIP files and extracting contents individually .. over the internet!). Snowman: Thanks! It's been a gradual progression. I've already documented in painful detail the evolution of the archive and what makes it tick. See http://www.hornet.org -> "FAQ" I'd talk more about the archive, but it feels as though this interview has taken an old skool flavor and I'd rather talk about the glory days while I have the chance. :) rcramer: You started out as a musician in the scene. Do you still do music, and if so, what tracking software do you use? Snowmeister: Yeah, I still track occasionally. I've gone from making several songs a month (back in 1992/1993) to one or two songs per year. They aren't very good but I enjoy listening to them. Since I recognized that they aren't really fit for public consumption, I took some of my own advice and stopped uploading them to the archive a long time ago. As far as what trackers I've used, the progression went something like this: 1992 - Whacker Tracker (.MOD) / Composer 669 (.669) 1993 - Composer 669 / Farandole (.FAR) 1994 - Farandole / Multitracker Module Editor (.MTM) 1995 - PolyTracker (.PTM) 1996 - PolyTracker / Impulse Tracker (.IT) 1997 - Impulse Tracker 1998 - Impulse Tracker For the first five years I tracked, I had the misfortune of sticking with programs that had limited lifespans. The two trackers I was most fluent with were Composer 669 and Farandole. Sadly, the format of songs those trackers produced are among some of the least supported today. I'm doing what I can to get the tunes I wrote converted to .WAV for posterity before I completely lose the ability to listen to them (hardware and software advancements are often not kind to older programs). rcramer: What do you think is your best song? Snowman: The same as everyone else's. The one I'm currently working on. rcreamer: You have the very unique position of working for CDROM.COM, the company that houses the largest demo archive in the world. I'd go as far as to compare it to The Starport BBS, The Sound Barrier, or Data Connection. (as a side note, I can't seem to connect to ANY of these BBS's, can someone fill me in on whats going on?) Actually, what I'm trying to say is that the Hornet Archive is the most elite setup I've ever seen on the Internet. It has features that used to be found purely on BBS's. I'd call it revolutionary. From what I can tell, your career has been largely influenced by the demo scene. Can you tell us exactly how the scene has influenced your career, and how you expect it to affect your direction in the future? Snowman: Both the Starport and Sound Barrier BBS's are officially closed. I never got the obituary on Data Connection (wasn't that YOUR BBS!?) but I assume it suffered a similar fate. There have been an incredible -- almost eerie -- number of circumstances that intimately tie my life to the demo scene. As luck would have it, I had a coworker (Rob) in 1993 who took me up to The University of Akron the summer before I actually started attending school there. Rob had a friend who he said was in the demo scene. Oh ho! I didn't consider myself just a regular scener in the summer of 1993. I was calling scene BBS's daily and was knowledgeable on the most recent happenings. To prove the point and impress Rob's friend, I took 2 floppy disks with me up to the U of A that day. On them were copies of the songs Starshine and Ice Frontier from the recently concluded Assembly '93. I had downloaded them that very morning from The Music Connection. When I showed the songs to Rob's friend, he just sort of yawned. Huh? "Oh yeah, I've had those tunes for a couple days now." "How on earth COULD you have them!? They just made it to American BBS's this morning!" "I got them off ftp.uwp.edu". That was my simultaneous introduction to both the Internet and what is now known as The Hornet Archive. As luck would have it, I persuaded the Computer Science department's faculty to give me an Internet account my first semester at university. Normally accounts were only assigned to you when you took a course that justified them. Immediately I took an interest in this crazy new internet demo archive, walking 15 minutes to the campus computer center with a box of floppies almost daily so I could download the latest productions to disk at an astounding 10k/s! (Remember folks, this is 1993 where you could actually expect speedy transfers on the 'net.) In the process, I discovered that this demo archive was producing a newsletter that talked about what was happening with the archive. That was my simultaneous introduction to both Dan Wright and DemoNews. As luck would have it, Dan let me start helping with the archive. But in order to do so efficiently, I had to learn a couple new tools; namely C and Perl. Not only was I taking computer science courses at school, I actually had a practical application for them when I went home at night. I would learn a trick in school and apply it to the archive. I would learn a trick with the archive and apply it to schoolwork. There is a saying that goes "Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life." This was my introduction to that maxim. As luck would have it, Matt Seidel in California took an interest in The Hornet Archive around 1994 and started mirroring it to his company's server. When The Hornet Archive ran out of room, Matt agreed to give us some extra space so that our overflow of new files could be split between two machines. When the people in charge of our original server (The University of Florida's engineering department) decided that it didn't make sense to waste bandwidth on a demos archive, Matt let us completely relocate to his server. That was my simultaneous introduction to both ftp.cdrom.com and Walnut Creek CDROM. As luck would have it, Dan Wright wanted to make a CDROM from the archive in 1994 (called "Escape"). This was going to be a "mixed-mode" CD, containing both data and raw audio. Since the audio tracks were going to be taken from the winning entries to Music Contest 2, it seemed logical that I should be the one to handle that part of the project. I had to carry my computer down to the audio/visual department of the U of A so I could record the songs onto DAT tape. This was my introduction to CDROM production. As luck would have it, I became eligible for cooperative education in the Fall of 1995 (where you get a temporary job that is related to your field of study at school). The only job I was likely to get in Ohio was at a cash-register manufacturing facility 40 minutes away. I thought I'd take a shot at seeing if there were any openings at Walnut Creek CDROM. After all, I already knew C, Perl, basic CDROM production, and was somewhat acquainted with the company as a result of the demo archive being located on their server. I asked to be employed there, they agreed, and I moved 2500 miles away to the most technologically advanced area of this country. That was my introduction to California. As luck would have it, the skills I learned while working with The Hornet Archive applied DIRECTLY to my new job at Walnut Creek CDROM. I immediately became a productive member of the company and earned enough money to finally attend a couple of the European parties I'd always wanted to go to (Assembly and The Gathering). That was my hands-on introduction to the international demo scene. As luck would have it, Walnut Creek CDROM's webmaster left the company in mid-1996 and the role needed to be filled. I had a very limited knowledge of HTML... The Hornet Archive's interface was very rudimentary at the time. I thought maybe I'd attempt to be the replacement webmaster. As a result, my knowledge of web servers, HTML, CGI, and other facets of the web improved dramatically. And as you can probably guess, this was YOUR introduction to the current interface of the archive. As luck would have it, I managed to pick up a few good friends in the scene, some of whom became my groupmates. As a result, I finally had the sense of "belonging" I was never able to attain with Renaissance. It seems highly ironic in this final DemoNews that a member of Renaissance would end up writing the introduction for the interview. I won't attempt to explain it. I don't know why it happens. For whatever reason, the demo scene and my real life have been synergistically intertwined since 1992. In my heart I know that each one of us has benefited from the scene in some way. Granted, your experiences may not be as profound as mine. I've just been lucky with my introductions. The end of DemoNews is indicative of the end of an era but not the end of the scene. People change. Technologies change. The world changes, but the same fundamental precept of the scene remains. Push the machine where it was never built to go and have some fun along the way. As long as the SCENE I grew up with is around in some capacity, you will continue to find me an active contributer. rcrapper: Obviously, the MSDOS based demoscene won't be around forever, yet, there will always be people wanting to push the limits of their computers and their technical and artistic skills. What do you think will be the outlet for these people in the future? Do you see potential for a "new" demoscene that is more in tune with today's technology? Snowyman: With the death of MSDOS demos comes an end to the era I referred to above. We're in this agitated transitional phase right now and quite frankly I have no idea where things are going to end up. Well, that's not exactly true. MSDOS demos will surely die a grueling death just as Amiga and C64 demos have done in scenes past. Wait a second! Last I knew the Amiga and C64 scenes were still alive and kicking. So maybe MSDOS demos won't die. Like I say... agitated transition. I think it's almost a given that the "Windows" scene will be the next one. Sure, you're going to find the occasional prophet who espouses the virtues of Linux, BeOS, or even FreeBSD. To those people, I simply say "nope". Too bad there isn't some cheap mainstream SGI machine available... RyDog: What are your favorite and/or most memorable events in the scene history? Snowman: - That bogus Future Crew demo that kept getting spread a few years ago. I think it was called "Third Reality" (3rdreal.zip?) and was nothing but a random .dat file, a non-working .exe, and a drummed up .txt file. Funny joke though. - There is a rivalry between Swedes and Finns. Zodiak (very popular musician many years ago) is Swedish and was attending Assembly '96 in Finland. While I was there, I saw some Finnish people teach him the phrase "I have a small penis", which he obligingly shouted in a high-pitched voice while jumping up and down. - The road trip from hell that Trixter and I made from Chicago to Syracuse on our way to NAID '96 (North American International Demoparty). - Like most BBS's of the day, the Sound Barrier had upload/download ratios. Sometimes, despite my best courier attempts, I couldn't find anything new to upload. I'd end up writing a new song just so I could get access to new files. - Completing the MC2 Final Results Intro with Trixter in 9 days, start to finish. - Calling Ryan Cramer on the phone and putting the receivers next to our computer speakers so we should let the other HEAR what great new tunes we'd downloaded. - Uploading Second Reality to The Hornet Archive (oddly enough I found it first on The Music Connection BBS). - Making use of DOS's "multi-config" feature so I could have specialized quick bootup options. This was most handy when I was first learning how to code graphics routines. :) - Downloading my first Necros tune from your BBS and the three of us exchanging email. - #trax in 1994. - The birth of Trixter's son. - Still watching demos on the same monitor I was using in 1992. - The massive coverup operation I did after 01-Article, 01-File, and Hornet News failed. It took weeks to join those text files into issues of DemoNews so that future generations might never know that there was a very dark period in the newsletter's past... that about 12 issues of DemoNews you see today on the archive never originally existed. Well, I guess it's not a coverup anymore. - DemoNews 314 - The fact that I still don't know WHERE the name "Hornet" came from (as in, why the machine was called HORNET.eng.ufl.edu). And the number one most memorable time in my personal scene history... - No matter how much I try to explain this, it's not going to make complete sense to you. You'll likely think the following a testament to people to took the hobby too seriously. That's ok. It's probably even true. It wouldn't have happened otherwise. Brought to tears by "Dope". Time and place: 16 April 1995, Quebec, CANADA. Imagine a highly constipated North American scene all meeting each other for the first time, actually being able to talk to others in person about demos and tracking, finally attending a party we never thought would happen in our scene lifetimes. Take these people, throw them all together in a small auditorium, dim the lights, and start playing a demo that was BUILT to stimulate your entire consciousness with overwhelming inspiration. Envision two hundred virgin party-goers with glassy eyes transfixed on a single screen, aware of their surroundings, feeling like part of a unified community rather than splintered components, for the FIRST TIME. It is a moment that shall not be repeated. There is only one "first time". And it's probably better that way. I've had more than my fair share of quality scene memories. So has my nefarious twin brother who has worked in tandem with me all these years. rcramer: Tell us about the origins of DemoNews? I remember it started out as a short text file with file listings, but later expanded into an entire scene magazine. Snowman: Dan Wright started the whole thing, though I don't think he ever saw it attaining the level of popularity that it did. It sort of just started out as a friendly little newsletter telling people what files had been recently uploaded. Later on (when you and I got actively involved) we starting having some really cool articles. But that took a tremendous amount of effort to do every week. Eventually we just sort of mellowed out and had a solid newsletter with new file announcements and some quality articles. That was comfortable for quite some time. But after a while, even that got to be a chore to do. And when it became a chore instead of a pleasure to work on, it was time to let go. I like closure, not loose ends. I'd much rather say something like "OK folks, it's a wrap." instead of "See you next week!"... with that next week never arriving. I've already been working on this very interview for 6 hours so far today. I hope that a solid article comes out of it, but it's just not something I have the energy to do regularly anymore. rcramer: Did you ever consider making DemoNews into a diskmag, like Imphobia? Snowman: Not only did we consider it, we actually attempted it! It was going to be called "DNDM" (for DemoNews DiskMag). This was sometime in 1995. We had music from several popular musicians, graphics from an unnamed member of Future Crew, a kick-butt logo, and all the articles carefully collected and edited for the production. So what happened? The code just didn't come together. The project kept dragging on and on... the interface was not delivered. A former groupmate (who became "former" due in no small part to the failure of this project) eventually had to concede that the diskmag would never see the light. That was a sad day. As many as 10 people had worked actively on the production and it was never finished. All that time, wasted. On a semi-related note, I actually wrote Darkness a couple months ago and asked if he might like to trade for a while; I could do a release of Imphobia and he could do about five issues of DemoNews. I never heard back from him about this so I guess he wasn't interested. We still trade CDs and t-shirts every once in a while so it's not like we're out of contact. I just hope that he takes the lead here and calls it a wrap for Imphobia (if, as it appears, the diskmag is dead) rather than falling into the "next week" rut. rcramer: What is your favorite beer and/or liquor? Do you still smoke lots of cigars? Snowrum: My favorite? Hmm... it would have to be Woodchuck (it's a cider beer I was first introduced to back at University). And yes, I continue to smoke Swisher Sweets Little Cigars. They are the size of cigarettes but pack a punch. Not quite as much punch as Kiwidog's cloves though. I have one of those self-destructive personalities with occasional moments of revelation. Over five years ago I had my last taste of pop/soda, and I assume that there will come a time when I give up smoking and drinking. Not for now though. After all, I still need to track music occasionally. rcramer: Even though this is the last issue of DemoNews, are there any plans to someday start it again, or perhaps release a "best of DemoNews" or anything like that? Snowman: Originally I was going to try to modernize things... finish up the ASCII version of DemoNews and then create some sort of online "knowledge database" with carefully indexed and searchable articles. Instead of having to sit down every weekend for 6 hours trying to bring a carefully orchestrated newsletter out of chaotic articles, I could just put 'em online as they came in. I'm still quite active in providing information online in HTML format. But now I think I might just hold off on the grandiose project ideas for a bit. Let's see what kind of scene evolves out of this agitated transition. rcramer: Would you like to send greets to anybody? Snowman: Just one. Trixter's little boy, Samuel Leonard. He's the one we're leaving the future scene to. rcramer: Smile for the camera. Any final words? Snowman: Quite frankly, I've fulfilled most of my scene goals and expectations. I've held 5 music contests, produced 83 issues of DemoNews, created 6 scene CDROMs, maintained The Hornet Archive for many years, been to four authentic demo compos (two in Europe, two in North America), founded a group, and made some friends I think I'll have for the rest of my life. The demo scene is both shaping and enriching my life and I am a better person for the experience. I've experienced the death of BBS's and the rise of the Internet. I've witnessed trackers (both people and programs) come and go. I've watched my fellow sceners get married and have children, graduate from college and worry about medical/dental plans, leave the scene and take with them a little part of it when they go. Many of you probably think I take the scene too seriously. But is it any wonder? My "real" life has been permanently and positively altered as a result of my participation. I have been in the right place at the right time more often than I care to mention. It's a true story of the PC DOS demo scene. And a not-so-small part of me wonders what would have happened if I hadn't bought that Sound Blaster Pro back in 1992. rcramer: Thanks for doing this interview, and thanks keeping DemoNews, the Music Contests, and The Hornet Archive going for all of these years... _____Conclusion Well thats it for the interview. I want to thank all of you for reading DemoNews over the years and being part of this great scene. I have been enjoying the DemoScene since 1992 (maybe even earlier) and am looking forward to the future as well. Feel free to drop me an E-Mail or contact me on IRC. I'm on the internet pretty much all of the time. DemoNews has been a large part of my scene experience and I will miss it greatly... >------------------------------------------------------- General Information -- Hornet Archive Mirror Sites : http://www.hornet.org/ha/pages/mirrors.html Where To Get DemoNews : http://www.hornet.org/info -> "DemoNews" Questions / Comments : r3cgm@hornet.org _ .o888888888888"' .o8"` `j. ' `88l' .o" .8" `8. 88l o8 .o88o. .8' '8o 88l 88 |8l .8; 88. .o888l. 88l 88""o. 88oo8' |8|$$8olo `8o888o. 8l' `8L 8L' 88 l8 "8, 88' o8 8l 8a. ol 8l 88 o8 `l, `8. 88 88 `888"88 [' "8 88 `' `8o 88 uL ,' 88 `8o._ [' ' [Stony] >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EODN