Aminet 44/Aminet 44 (2001)(GTI - Schatztruhe)[!][Aug 2001].iso/Aminet/demo/mag/GDS-DISC11b.lha/text/CodersAboutCoders

Text File | 1998-10-02 | 24KB | 510 lines

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                      *** CODERS ABOUT CODERS! ***«»
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«c4»OPINIONS COLLECTED BY «c3»ZEROX/GODS«»
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«c5»
Most sceners want to be «c2»appreciated & respected «c5»by other sceners, and then
especially by the ones with the same functions as them. And when it comes
to the coders, there is no exception! Therefore I asked some of the best
coders at the present scene to write some comments about their colleagues.
Infact I asked 10 coders which all deserve to at least be mentioned among
the top 20.«»
«»
However, it was not as easy as I first expected to actually get their comments.
Some claimed they didn't have time to answer, other simply told me they were
too lazy too answer, some said they didn't have the knowledge to answer and
some didn't even bother to reply at all. Of course all are bad excuses. It should
be regarded as an honour to be contacted by «c2»the D.I.S.C. Team... «c5»;)«»
«»
Nevertheless, I think the comments below should be interesting reading. And
Gods grace to the ones that care about the scene and answered! You will of course
get positive remarks in future issues. The rest of you have to bribe us as
usual, hehe...«»
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«c5»Now read the comments...«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»ANTIBYTE/SCOOPEX:«»
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«c6»BY BLUEBERRY:«»
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«c1»Nice and fast code, but not much variation, it seems. Maybe it is his
style that is a bit too homogeneous.«»
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«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
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«c1»OK, The last scoopex intros are the best ever made, but I've
been told that antibyte is a old member of scoopex, who
is not very active, but It may be false.
Well, I don't exactly know the codework of Antibyte,
and I don't want to say too much bullshit on that great man.«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
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«c1»Antibyte really had it going for a while with his Superautodrome
series which were mainly based around the 3d-engine, hardcore muffler
style music, and the typical Antibyte colour choice I'd say. Dont know
how much progress he made from one intro to the next, but I like to think
that he optimised his routines all the time :) It seems that he often
saves cpu on using less colours than 256, a lot of his routines seem
to be 64 or 32 colours with linear palettes (instead of using shadetables,
which is a bit more time consuming, but allows for more freedom in the
graphics department). I cant say that I have anything bad to say about his
code, only the presentation of the code didnt seem to improve that much
over the years. Everything looks mostly the same. He has a nice engine in
64k though. Probably coded in assembler aswell which is becoming more rare
these days.«»
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«c6»BY SLUMMY:«»
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«c1»After roughly two years of hyperactivity in 97 and 98, Antibyte suddenly
stopped his (mass-)production of intros. One reason might be that he was
tired of winning almost every competition he attended (not that likely),
another reason could be that he didn't feel like spending any more time om
doing keyframes and object-generators for his 3d-engine. In my oppinion
there were two good things to be said about Antibyte's introprojects:
First of all, the engine was fast and Antibyte's carefull (manual)
keyframing made the scenes look nice, and secondly, you could get away with
only watching every third intro, and still not be afraid you had missed any
new improvements, objects or effects inserted between the 3d-scenes.
Most of the work I've seen from Antibyte has been well-done, but very
standard stuff. What separates him from all the other uninventive, but
technically skilled coders is the enormous productivity he showed, and the
fact that his productions despite their simple design looked quite nice.
My favourite effect from Antibyte would be his cool interference-routine
from the ocs-demo "Pha Q - Lameness took me", released in 1993, eventhough
Saviour / Complex did the same thing in '92.«»
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«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
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«c1»I always liked this guy. His many intros and few demos has been setting new
standards through the years, and he certainly has his 3D very well under
control. One particular thing about him that I think is great is that his
productions are fast on 030, which make a 030-owner like myself happy :)
I think all the productions I have seen from him has high quality. Not all
intros too different from each other, but the engine he coded has continously
been improved and with new features. One thing I miss a bit from him is
routines that are NOT dependent on his 3D-engine.«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»BLUEBERRY/LOONIES:«»
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«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
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«c1»Ah ah! Loonies is the second group to have done 3D-FPU corrected
mapping optimized for 060, after SKARLA.
Cybercinematastic is a very "worked" demo,
while other loonies production kept their "mad" style,
very interesting also, to my mind.(goatraince)
Anyway, I prefer to see 100% original 3D scenes than
movie-inspired scene. But, OK, cyber...is fun and
sometimes impressive. But... where is 2D ?«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
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«c1»Now Blueberry made one of my finest moments on the Party when we had just
seen the 64k pc intro in the 4k compo. I was awestruck by the 64k (which I
thought was really a 4k :) ), but then we heard that it was disqualified
naturally and we again settled down with the :"Of course, you cant have that
good music and graphics in 4k" feeling. Then along comes Peanut in all its
singing and dancing glory, and we were jumping up and down shouting amiga
slogans  and dancing along with this great 4k from heaven. Hehe. That was a
true classic in my opinion, and that intro also inspired me to start writing
4ks later on. As he proved how much you can put into those bloddy bytes. :)
Deep Pan was also something of the same character, lots of nice calculated
stuff from start to finish and some innovative routines and sweet design.
I especially love the hires logos in the start, gives me the :"this is 64k,
and this is about to kick you in the nuts with great code" feeling.«»
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«c6»BY SLUMMY:«»
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«c1»When it comes to his later Loonies-releases they have mostly been in
cooperation with Psycho, and I don't know who's done what. Both Peanut and
the Deeppan-intros have contained some parts that looked interesting
(codewise that is, mostly it's been quite ugly, rainbow-coloured stuff)...
All in all it seems like Blueberry is quite skilled when it comes to the
standard-effects most coders release these days, and I really enjoyed some
of his tunnels (the ones in DeeppanTFS and Valhalla kick ass!)«»
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«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
«»
«c1»Here we have an extremely clever coder, always figuring the smartest,
smallest and fastest solution to almost every problem. Optimizing in size
and speed has been a trademark for him for a long time now and there have
been some cool releases comming from him. Not many though which probably
is connected to the time he spends on each routine. I particularly like
the intro 'Deep Pan' which was released under the Efreet label and is quite
impressing regarding amount of routines and certainly a trendsetter for
intros to come regarding precalculating music, textures etc.«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»KRABOB:«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
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«c1»Hmm, a very good coder I think, and codes for new hardware which is rather
refreshing (although I dont get to see it often). His routines are pretty
fast, but he's never made a production which makes me go :"gooosh, thats
amazing". I think the colour choice of most mankind productions suck a little
too, although they have improved. Sometimes the design becomes a little too
messy too, in the way of throwing too much at the screen. Anyway, concerning
code, I got no complaints really as he has some fast routines and has more
knowledge of both hardware and routines than I have. I think that mankind
productions generally should be cleaned up a little in the  visual/audible
department. If they do that, they'll become a really winning team.«»
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«c6»BY SLUMMY:«»
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«c1»The only releases I've seen from this guy are Scream thy last
scream-blurremix, which is INCREDIBLY ugly, and New World Child, which was
quite nice! None of the effects were that creative, and as I only have an
030 I won't say anything about their speed (for all I know they COULD be
heavily 060-optimized). But one differs Krabob from a lot of other coders
in the scene today: he's wise enough to spend time on making design-code!
Now that so few demos display new and creative effects, the stamina to do
some design-"effects" is what makes you a MAN in coder-circles! (Ofcourse
we all know that a fast 3d-engine only means that you want people to
BELIEVE you have a big dick...)«»
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«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
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«c1»I wont express many thoughts about him, since I don't seem to recall I
have seen any productions from him. Sorry.«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»LOADERROR:«»
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«c6»BY BLUEBERRY:«»
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«c1»Loaderror is somehow able to make that new demo design style with lines
and other things in front, a bit more interesting to look at than it
usually is.«»
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«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
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«c1»One of the greatest and productive coder!
I consider LoadError is also a great graphist & artist, as
he always use the graphical "side" of his effects, sometimes
using some kind of "bugs" to have a photographic rendering.
Enormous cutting technique. Does Loaderror use a script editor ?
Great use of the palette also: it's rare.«»
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«c6»BY SLUMMY:«»
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«c1»I mentioned the importance of design when I was writing about Krabob, but
when it comes to my favourite rival, design is the only thing of
importance! I'm looking forward to the day when Loaderror will finally
complete his quest to make a really goodlooking demo without ANY effects,
and it seems he's getting closer every day... In my opinion he has better
design-skills than any other amiga-coder today, and that's the reason he's
so highly ranked in the charts nowadays. The only code of his that has ever
impressed me is the music-generator he uses in his 4k's. He's never done a
demo-effect that's even remotely creative or impressive, and I suppose
he'll never do one either. And in a way I don't see why he should, his
productions are still succesfull, atleast as long as they don't try to
compete against the world dominance of the Smurfs.«»
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«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
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«c1»Certainly a coder with many good ideas and a productive coder as well.
I have seen many productions from him and together with the rest of Eph,
ha has managed to create an own style regarding design and setup of routines.
Good original routines from him, but very seldom the fastest. Especially the
newer stuff is not too fun to watch on 030, but is a must see on 060.
His 3D seems to be quite buggy :)«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»MAVEY/POTION:«»
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«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
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«c1»I had to check for potion demo!
I've just heard about a 68K raytracing routines...
Too bad, I have no time to find one.«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
«»
«c1»This guy has two worlds, his demo world and his intro world. The demo world is
does not even compare to the intro world. Demos are ordinary, with a nice 3d
engine using his HAM c2p and thats about it really. Theres not that much other
than racing around a lot of scenes, but this is probably the way demos will
become judging by the 3d accellerated PC-scene. This isnt such a bad thing,
but it is important that the 3d scenes do interesting things. When it comes to
intros, this guy is my favourite, with the kick ass sound engine coupled with
cool design, fast and fresh routines all the way in the mega intro gift, which
I tend to watch about a million times everytime I get near a 060 :) I heard the
64k ppc intro kicked ass aswell, so I'm looking forward to seeing that. No bad
words at all about this coder. :)«»
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«c6»BY SLUMMY:«»
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«c1»Gush was nice, but slightly boring. Gift impressed the shit out of me,
mostly because of the sheer amount of effects and music Mavey managed to
squeeze into 64k. Rout was what finally made me start doing ocs-productions,
and it really impressed me when I first watched it. The demo he released at
MekkaSymposium2k is one of the ugliest productions I've seen this year.
All in all Mavey is a skilled (and friendly) coder whom I'd rather not
compete against in an introcompetition.«»
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«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
«»
«c1»Good and fast routines and productions always interesting in terms of
complexity. I like his work very much even though 3D seems to be domination
his productions but thats the way the scene is these days. Potion has
released incredible intros and has also been teaching us how much can be
put into a small number of bytes.«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»RUBBERDUCK/TBL:«»
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«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
«»
«c1»A hard worker.
My favorite demo from him is "Rain"
He managed to code effects still not done on amiga,
Like panoramic cube mapping or these nice "recursive"
zooms: In fact these technics has already been seen on
3Daccelerated PC or on WEB pages, but here, they are nice
and well-coded for the 060. It must be difficult
to have the Offa-equalizer heritage, and continue coding
with the same level.«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
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«c1»Rubberduck is a long time serving amiga scener, and a bloody good coder too.
After Equalizer and Offa went away with their mass appealing demos with bright
and colourful routines, there was Rubberduck left to keep the Tbl flag waving.
He does it well too, in his usual "darkside" style, which you either love or
loathe. Id say that the two last productions are the best he's made. Now theres
more thought behind the graphics, typography than in Panacea and Darkside. The
routines are supposed to be leftovers, but they hardly look like leftovers to me.
Great metaballs, voxelscape and even some innovative routines like the strange
multitunnelthingys and the "rooms" :) Which I havent seen on amiga before (people
tell me they are widely used on pc though). Rain was a little bit buggy in places,
and thats about all the negative comments I can give Rubberduck.;)«»
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«c6»BY SLUMMY:«»
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«c1»Definitely my favourite among the coders mentioned here. For a while he was
just "One of the few TBL-coders without severe colourblindness", and
eventhough I enjoyed Darkside and Panacea (nice effects, no timing, and
not-so-impressive graphics) he didn't rank very high in "Slummy's private
coder-chart". The fact that all the productions I've seen featuring
Rubberduck has been in cooperation with other coders and without specific
credits, means that I don't know exactly which effects have been done by
him. However, if he has only coded 20% of Senseless and Rain (which I
really doubt), he deserves quite a bit of respect! All the cool and
innovative effects together with the nice'n'laidback design makes Rain the
best amiga-demo released during the last couple of years. And ofcourse,
a bit of arrogance is also nice...«»
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«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
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«c1»Innovative, but routines are not fast on 030 at least. Seems to go for
complexity and not speed and therefore he has created some beautiful
effects, but is - in my opinion and on my computer - lacking in speed.
I hope to see more from him in the future, because he creates good
productions.«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»SCHLOTT/NERVE AXIS:«»
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«c6»BY BLUEBERRY:«»
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«c1»Schlott has a rare ability to actually make the thing look good, apart
from being innovative and impressive. Colours and movements seem always
carefully chosen.«»
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«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
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«c1»Arrrgh...2*2 18bit Ham screens!!!!
It allows astounding color effects, you can't do with other screens...
I am totally jealous against Nerve Axis.Grrr. So I will write
some evil things about them: Their effects are not original!
(well, in fact they are.) and... It doesn't work on CGX (true)!!!
And... Hmmm..So, The ship go into the space, earth explodes, and
then, what ? What?... The group is quite inactive, now.«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
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«c1»Here we have a coder who sets his goals for a demo high. When I saw Relic the first
time, I thought it was partly animations ;) Because it looked too good to be true.
The best 3d demo ever on amiga thats for sure. The thing that makes it mostly for me
is that its not only the normal features of a 3d engine, buts also lots of things
especially and painstakingly coded for this demo alone, like all the special explosion
effects and that kind of awesome looking stuff. I can also see this dedication to quality
in the Extravaganja music disk, which is also a staggering effort considering that it's
"only a musicdisk".Nerve Axis has been on the uk scene for some time, but it's only the
last few years that they have really shone through as a very high quality group. I dont
know if there'll be more demos from them. Relic certainly look like a truly exhausting
demo to make. So inspiration will be lost after such a hit. Trying to top it, isnt going
to be easy. Truly a classic, and all honour to Schlott for the curding :)«»
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«c6»BY SLUMMY:«»
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«c1»The first production I saw from Schlott was the winning demo from
Assembly'97 (Pulse), and apart from the golden wobly-twisty-thingie it
didn't really impress me. Relic was far better, and eventhough it doesn't
contain alot of impressive effects, Schlott has coded all the routines
needed to produce a nicely designed film-demo. The musicdisc Extravaganja
also features a lot of nice design-code, something which I really like!
I'd say that (similar to Loaderror / Ephidrena) Schlott is a good
"demo-creator", but as an "effect-coder" he hasn't impressed me yet.«»
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«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
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«c1»Both speed and complexity combined with great ideas and design makes him
one of my favorite coders ever since I saw 'Pulse'. He has a way of
solving problems in original ways and seems to pay a lot of attention to
detail therefore putting in a lot of hard work in the releases. He is an
impressive coder in my opinion!«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»SLUMMY/SPACEBALLS:«»
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«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
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«c1»Slummy is a very good coder, but to  my mind, he should code
less demo and make again more original effects: he could
concentrate on one big and good project. Some of his demo are very good,
like Supermonster, and other are bad, like Snack.
Something interesting to note anyway: each slummy demos are
logic and "stand by themselves" as an artwork.
I saw the Spaceballs website recently and I was impressed by
the number of demo presented there. I am totally obsessed by
the demo Smurph: I saw it only two times three years ago,
and was amazed by the psychedelic script. I'm searching
this one for three years,and couldn't managed to find it.
Please someone, send it to me: [e-mail] :-)«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
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«c1»Well, my main adversary in the norwegian scene. After losing the Kg compo to those damn smurph
antics of his again I really feel like some slagging off here. SMURPH 2, sounded like a rhino
farting contest, and looked like something Lazur would be capable of drawing with a mouse stuck
up his ass. Even though it has realtime radialblur, so there :) On a more positive note, I can
mention his best production ever in my view. The a500 demo psychokiller was really cool. It had
style and flair where everybody else were just trying to do the same old crap routines over again.
The special mood was achieved by using few, well chosen colours and a great detroit soundtrack
by Teis. Slummy also has better knowledge about the native amiga hardware than most of us other
newschool coders that mostly use the c2p. :) So overall, a nice friend/enemy of mine, but I still
think we should have won KG. And Tg too. And the 4k at Tg. bah :D«»
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«c7»SLUMMY ABOUT HIMSELF:«»
«»
«c1»Hmmm, weird guy this one. He has coded some rather inventive effects, and
three or four of his productions have had a quite nice design, but his
(huge) list of releases is badly scarred by bad jokes and lack of time.
;-D«»
«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
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«c1»Can't remember anything in particular about him.«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»TRICKTRAX/IRIS:«»
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«c6»BY BLUEBERRY:«»
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«c1»TrickTrax continually finds new interesting uses of old routines, and
often has some new ones, too. His code could use some speed, though.«»
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«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
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«c1»It's a coincidence: I have downloaded old iris demos this week.
and I remember now: that impressive demo the last year!
Well,well I'd like to write more but I had to look at Iris
demos now...«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
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«c1»Hmm Tricktrax has coded a lot of small productions occasionally popping up from nowhere. They
usually seem a little rushed though. And colour choice and design is often heavily neglected
in favour of showing yet another bump/env/goraud torus/lump of points. Which is okay, but not
that awesome. Iris' latest demo had some innovative stuff, and was fun to watch, but had some
boring design flaws. Why the hell would we want an internet explorer demo with naked ladies in
the corner? That simpy sucks :) And graphics tend to get a bit messy sometimes thinking about
resolution and general composition of the effects elements.(uh, hope you got that). Still,
tricktrax dont need to make a big step forward to make a really great demo technically. He just
needs to  mature a bit when it comes to designing and chosing colours and such things.«»
«c6»BY SLUMMY:«»
«»
«c1»I-Surf is the most recent of his releases that I've seen (the only other
one is Brutal), so I'll just write some words about that one.
The design is terrible, and that's a shame because some of his effects are
REALLY interesting! If he could just improve his design-skills (or get
someone else to do the job) he might release something very nice.«»
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«c5»ABOUT «c3»ZIG/FLOPPY:«»
«»
«c6»BY KRABOB:«»
«»
«c1»Had to check for his demos.
Zig, If you got the time, send me your productions !«»
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«c6»BY LOADERROR:«»
«»
«c1»Zig is also the author of some of my favourite demos. Id like to mention Napalm, which has the
right kick ass feel when it comes to movement along with the pace of the music and has mostly nice
looking colours and some nice design touches. I like that an element of the demo repeats itself.
Im thinking about the zooming text here, as that makes the demo become more of a whole. Not just
seperated routines and scenes. The second demo I'd like to mention is the Murderous demo from this
years mekka symposium. This has the same nice feel to it as theres mostly one concept throughout the
whole demo. Although there are some minor things, like :"why is the end screens colours so different
from the other colours, which were used throughout the entire demo?". Personally, I kind of find the
minimalistik planes, and the techno music, rather hard to mix with the dead people scrolling across
at one point in the demo too. Apart from that, I think this is a good demo, and points the way forward
for floppy. Again, technically, I cant really comment on his code, which I think is fast and a step above
the normal for amiga demos.«»
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«c6»BY TRICKTRAX:«»
«»
«c1»Good coder and like most polish coders a wizz on math. I always enjoys his
fast and goodlooking routines, also after the cooperation with Torus ended
(Torus died). He has been quite dedicated to ham8 and has made a lot of
quality productions. He is maybe not the most innovative coder, but his
skills makes up for that plenty.«»
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«c7»AT THE END KRABOB WANTS TO ADD SOMETHING:«»
«»
«c1»I'd like to add 3 spanish friend, if you don't mind: (Of course we dont... Ed!)«»
«c6»Drareg/ozone:«»
«»
«c4»He is the coder of "smokebomb"! (and 2 or 3 other astounding stuffs)
How can we forget that demo!
For me, It's the real heritage from groups like melon or movement:
the real amiga demo feeling.
The biggest cutting work I've ever seen!
I find something new in that demo each time I see it.«»
«»
«c6»Peskanov/Capsule:«»
«»
«c4»Luis, (the coder of phase one) has coded a PPC demo, finished to the 2/3,
with EXTRATERRESTRIAL effects, 100% original (I mean really NeveR done)
and that could make a revolution, like nexus7 or hardwired in their times.
I hope he will take the time to finish this, as He is not very motivated.«»
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«c6»HAM/Software Failure:«»
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«c4»A lonely intro coder that always find interesting effects...
(check for Euskal parties intros.)«»
«c1»That's all!«»
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