Commodore Free 8/Commodore_Free_Issue_08_2007_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv oorni

Text File | 2007-01-01 | 12.5 KB | 427 lines

uInterview with Cadaver (Lasse rni)
Programmer,Graphics Artist, Musician Of
covert bitops
 http://covertbitops.c64.org/

Q. & Please introduce yourself to our
readers?

I'm a 28 year old guy from northern
Finland, with an interest in computers
& metal music. As for "serious" stuff,
right now I'm wrapping up my computer
science studies in the university.

Q. Who are covert bitops?

It's a two-man (well, Yehar hasn't been
very active for some time, but anyway)
C64 group dedicated to making C64
games, music & tools. The tools are
mainly of the crossdevelopment sort,
running on PC, but there are also a
couple of C64 music editors. In
addition, the covert bitops site has a
sort of educational mission with
intermediate/advanced level "rants" on
C64 game programming. Anyone is welcome
to write guest C64 programming rants.

Q. Where did the inspiration for the
Metal Warrior series come from?

It originates from an Amiga game (also
called Metal Warrior) which I wrote as
I was quite young, 15 years old. I had
just started playing guitar, mainly
metal music, & inspired by C64/Amiga
sideview action-adventure games,
cyberpunk movies & such, wanted to
create my own cyberpunk adventure with
a metal guitarist as a protagonist. The
C64 Metal Warrior, not originally
planned as a series, was then an
opportunity to revisit this stuff with
a slightly more "grown up" mindset.
Some characters & places remain but
most stuff was new.

Q. Did you write all the story/plot
yourself?

Yes, except that for MW4, I came up
with the idea of the "Agents of Metal"
-organization together with a French
musician Lionel Gendre (also known as
Malekith or Agent M), who also did
music for the game.

Q. Did you like the "Trilogy" special
edition by Simon Quernhorst?

It was a nice opportunity for people to
get actual packaging & media. Of course
I personally don't hold the first three
games in as good regard as when they
were made, considering what I've
learned since of programming & game
design.

Q. Do you have any plans to continue
the series, or put together a new game?

With that in mind that MW4 is the final
game, I implemented a lot of freedom in
how the story can turn out. So I can't
know who of the characters lived & who
died when you played the game, & there-
fore continuing it would be hard. But
yes, I have plans to make at least one
C64 game. I've talked about it on the
Lemon64 forum at least, the codename is
"Hessian" I guess if it comes out some
day, it won't be that far from the MW
games, as sideview scrolling action-
adventure is still my favourite genre
to write in.

Q. BOFH - Servers Under Siege was a
nice game too, what inspired it?

The idea of a computer admin as
protagonist came when I was performing
my civilian service (instead of serving
in the military) as a network admin/
helpdesk guy. The building in which I
worked was modelled as the play area, &
then from movies like Die Hard came the
idea of terrorists & bombs & lots of
shooting happening there. This game btw
was originally written on the PC, so it
was also about the challenge of down-
converting the game to a much more
limited platform.

Q. Can you tell our reader about some
of the other games on the covert bitops
website?

Advanced Action Movie Simulator is a
crap game written for the 2001 Crap
Game Compo. It is supposed to make fun
of the multi-level movie licenses
popularized by Ocean. Escape From New
York is a crap game written for the
1999 Crap Game Compo respectively. It's
my tribute to both the movie & to the
buggy/sluggish gameplay of some C64
games, like Cobra. Then there are also
a refinished & modified version of the
original Amiga Metal Warrior & a Game
Boy Advance version of MW4, which runs
most of the original C64 game code
under a very coarse "emulation".

Q. All the games & utilities on the
site are free to download, was this
always the case?

Q. Why dont you charge for the games &
utilities?

The games would get pirated anyway, &
then I'd just feel bad, so to me it
makes more sense to maximize the
potential playerbase by offering them
free as default. As for the tools,
there are comparable (or better) free
utilities available, & trying to charge
for them would simply reduce userbase &
make me look ridiculous. I also kind of
want to make the point that if you're
going to charge for your C64 games,
please try to make them the highest
quality you can, comparable with
commercial past titles. Of course
making games as a hobby or part-time
job isn't quite the same as getting
paid to work on them full-time, but on
the other hand people back then never
had as good tools as we have now. Plus
many commercial games were made in a
rush of a few weeks or months, we have
the luxury of spending as much time as
we want & can.

Q. Covert BitOps Loadersystem can you
explain this system, to our reader?

It's a quite flexible disk fastloader
system for people to embed & use in
their own assembly language programs,
games for example. In the demoscene,
there are also faster, more specialized
solutions available (like Krill's
loaders, or DreamLoad) but they usually
also take more memory.

Q. What do you like to do most - code,
write games or make music?

Isn't coding & making games the same?
I guess I like coding most, trying to
optimize some routine even faster for
example. I always like to start C64
game projects from the technical things
- like the scroll routine, sprite
multiplexing, but of course once the
technical side works well enough then
it has to take back seat compared to
actual gameplay, story etc. & design
decisions. But in the final stages of
the project the technical side may
return to haunt you once again, for
example you're running out of disk
space or memory, or the things you've
added have made the game too slow. Then
it's back to technical optimizing...

Q. What are your favourite C64 games?

Green Beret & Gunship have received the
most playtime, & I guess they are my
all-time favorites. Though one keeps
finding good C64 games regularly, there
are so many of them.

Q. What started you programming?

The C64's manuals as well as articles &
type-in programs in Finnish computer
magazines.

Q. Given unlimited time, what would you
develop for the C64?

Even unlimited time wouldn't help
fundamental limitations like processor
speed or memory. But I guess I'd make
an action/adventure game with very many
disksides of data, if I wouldn't get
bored first.

Q. What in your opinion is the best
application/Demo or game for the
Commodore 64?

If the idea is to pick just one, it's
kind of hard to answer, so I'll leave
this one out.

Q. Do you prefer to use emulators or
the real machine?

Emulators are good for fast testing &
yes, I use them most of the time, so I
guess I prefer them. Real machines get
used for final testing of own programs,
or specialized gaming-marathons. Of
course you can't beat the real thing,
but the convenience of emulators is
amazing.

Q. Have programmers now come to a full
stop so to speak with regards to new
ways of pushing the machine to its
limits?

Don't know, ask the democoders. But in
terms of game development, one tends to
notice that there are interesting
solutions from the whole C64 era, some
early games actually do some quite
clever things. Nowadays you can better
take inspiration from several other
platforms too, though.

Q. Can you explain to our reader about
Cross development & its advantages &
disadvantages, related to designing
applications for the Commodore system?

Mostly, it makes developing faster &
less painful. You get much faster
compile times, you can use mouse
instead of your last almost-broken
joystick to pixel graphics, you can
automatize the build process (for
example using a makefile) & if you need
some little utilities to transform your
data, making them in some modern high
level language can be easier & faster
than using C64 assembly or Basic, & if
they are commandline utilities, you can
easily integrate them with the rest of
the build process. What youve got to
watch out for is making music/sound &
SID emulation is not quite there, so
test on a real machine or a HardSID
card, & coding fastloaders - always
test on real disk drives. Also some
people maintain that using a C64
assembler or monitor is more convenient
for testing small changes, see for
yourself.

Q. Do you have any advice for would be
Commodore programmers, should for
example they learn basic then move onto
Machine code or just jump in & learn
machine code straight off?

C64 Basic as a language is quite
worthless in my opinion, but in the
beginning it can be convenient to
explore the graphics & sound
capabilities using it first. Of course,
in the end all the good stuff happens
in C64 assembly language, but it can
still be quite intimidating at first,
so I'd also recommend experience in
modern high level languages like C++ or
Java for getting used to algorithms
etc. And the final thing: expect a lot
of work & sweat in any case!

Q. Do you think anyone could program or
does it take a certain type of lets say
elite brain?

I wouldn't like to use the word "elite"
but I guess it may take a certain kind
of problem solving ability or a way of
thinking that is hard to teach beyond
the basics.

Q. I started to look at Goattracker
that supports output to the HardSID
soundcard or CatWeasel MK3. Can you
explain why this music system is
preferable to the current tracker?

It's quite possible that a musician has
already found a better editor, at least
from a personal preference viewpoint,
but I guess it's worth trying out if
one wants relative ease of use &
tracker-style editing, relatively low
player rastertime usage (between 16-20
lines maximum, usually) & relatively
low player memory footprint.

Q. Can you provide some information on
covert bitops No-Commodore projects?

Anything non-Commodore related on the
site isn't really Covert Bitops stuff,
but included for the convenience of not
having to create another homepage, or
because it's required for the
Commodore-related stuff, like the
Blasphemous Multimedia Engine (BME)
library, which is a set of old school
routines that aids the graphic cross-
development tools like the sprite/
background editors.

Q. Do you think there is still the same
following for the Commodore 64 today as
there was say 5 years ago?

Can't comment on the general
"following", but at least the activity
of producing demos, games & disk
magazines is certainly diminishing. Of
course it's up to everyone to decide in
which ways & how much they want to be
active. And there are always positive
surprises, like the games produced as a
result of the Game Over(view) Freestyle
Jam.

Q. There is a hatred of Commodore
Sceners (programmers & developers) to
what is termed "lamers" or "lame users"
can you explain the term "lamer" & why
the general hatred to these users

I don't know if it's healthy to discuss
these things, & in the past it no doubt
meant different things, but nowadays &
as my personal opinion I'd say
"lameness" mostly manifests as the
laziness to do your own research. It's
then in some way understandable why
persons who have been active a long
time on the C64 & having done their own
Research, find this laziness irritating
& may (myself included) lash out in
some pretty uncivilized ways.

Q. Do you ever think that "lamers"
would be welcome to say Coding parties,
maybe even just as voters?

I actually seldom visit parties, but I
guess it's much easier (or maybe
because your social survival-
instinct compels you) to be welcoming
in the physical world as opposed to the
cyberspace.

Q. If you were given 1 million pounds
what would you do with the money?

I don't think that's really interesting
to the readers, but I guess having a
very nicely equipped home recording
studio wouldn't hurt.

Q.How were you introduced to Commodore?

I remember playing Pitfall 2 in 1985 at
a friend before my family got our own
machine about a half year later.

Q. What question would you like to have
been asked?

I think everything was mostly well
covered, so none.

Q. Have you read Commodore Free & if so
how did you rate the magazine?

Yes, I can admit to skimming some of
the issues. I'd say some more proof-
reading wouldn't hurt, as well as more
confidence in the editorials. Otherwise
it seems a fairly nice magazine.

Q. Do you think there is a market for
an updated Commodore 64/128 system?

Not really. I think the greatest
strength is the standard to which we've
used to. I know people program for
example demos using the DTV's enhanced
features, but with the C64 user base
being limited as it is, I don't think
any further division would create
significant activity.

Lasse rni Thank you for your time, I
appreciate your comments Thanks for the
interview; it was a pleasure to answer.
  http://covertbitops.c64.org/