Amiga Plus 2004 #2

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Wrap

Text File | 2004-01-31 | 11.7 KB | 354 lines

»PIC:barclip.ilbm» »CL9: Interview With z5, Maker Of A.D.A. »PIC:barclip.ilbm» »CL4: By Darkhawk/IRIS »CL1:As some of you might know, ADA stands for Amiga Demoscene Archive, and can be reached at ada.planet-d.net. For a review of the site, I refer you to my article dealing with it. In here, we will interview the maker and maintainer of this very nice scene homepage, and hear a bit about past, present and future of the project. »CL0:DH: Welcome to this interview z5. First, I think our readers would like to know a bit about you. Who are you, what do you do for a living, and how do you manage to have time for ADA? »CL2:z5: Nothing much to say really. I'm 29 years old and I live in Belgium. I studied to become an engineer. At the moment, I'm programming PLC's (that's Programmable Logic Controllers) in the automation industry. Apart from the demoscene, other hobbies of mine include bicycling and I love playing guitar. »CL1:DH: So, what is the story behind your motivation for ADA? How did you encounter the scene for the first time, and what have you been doing in the scene up until ADA? »CL2:z5: Well, there is only one motivation and that is a real passion for everything that is created in the demoscene. That goes from graphics, modules, demos,... Over the years, it has given me so much pleasure watching all this stuff. I actually discovered the demoscene quite early as I bought my first Amiga 1000 in 1986, after having been blown away by Defender of the Crown when someone demonstrated the A1000 in the school I was going to. Like many, I got really fascinated by the cracktros: Bamiga Sector One, Paradox, Angels, Ackerlight, Alpha Flight... I seem to remember Wild Copper being the first real demo that I ever saw. I was blown away. Now, some 15 years later, my interest for the scene hasn't diminished one bit. I don't consider myself to be a scener though. There was a time when I really wanted to join the scene and I did some painting back then, but at that time (1994-95), it was rather difficult to get into the scene, especially since I live in Belgium. »CL1:DH: As far as I remember, there were a very active cracking scene in Belgium, but that was in the very early nineties. Continuing along the same vein, what is the story behind your handle? I can't really figure it out, but I guess there must be some hidden meaning in it? »CL2:z5: There isn't any story behind it :) Quite a crap nick, but I'm stuck with it now. »CL1:DH: Let's focus on your homepage now then. Describe in your own words, what ADA is and should be? »CL2:z5: Well, at the moment, ADA is just an archive of high quality productions. This includes slideshows, intros (64,40k,4k), musicdisks, cracktros, demos and diskmags. At the time of writing this interview, there are 328 productions online with 3325 screenshots, which means an average of about 10 screenshots/demo. Each production has the most important info: credits, download link, party where it was released, system requirements,... Visitors can register on ADA which means they can add comments to each demo and vote for each demo (from 1/5 to 5/5). With these votes, we generate all kind of charts, like the top 30 chart for all categories, and a top 10 chart for each category (intro 64k, intro 4k,...). We also have a logogallery, featuring some of the best logos seen in Amiga demos. I love nicely painted logos. »CL1:DH: Yes, your logogallery is indeed a very nice touch, I've often wanted to have such a gallery myself on my HD, admiring the unique art created in the older scene, but now you came along and did it. I am fairly certain many older sceners are very thankful for this. Anyway, how did you get the idea to start with ADA, and how did it develop in the start? »CL2:z5: To be honest, I didn't have any intention of starting a website about demos. About 2 and a half years ago, I discovered a very simple tutorial on how to build a webpage in 10 minutes or something like that. And I wanted to give it a try, just for learning purposes. Of course, I needed a subject to put some content on my site so I chose the subject closest to my heart, the Amiga demoscene. In the meantime, I got to know Vanquish (who lives in the UK), who is very good with graphics/photoshop. From there, the idea just evolved... Never did I think that it would evolve in such a huge project :) »CL2:Actually, the first plan was to make N.A.D., the Newschool Amiga Demoscene, featuring releases from 1995 and onwards. But it became obvious that we just couldn't leave out all this great stuff released before 1995. That is probably the reason why there are now more 'newschool' demos on ADA Once we have finished archiving those, we will really get stuck in the older productions. »CL2:When we went online 2 years ago, we had about 120 productions, amounting to 130 pages of pure html, which was a nightmare :) Luckily for us, only a couple of days later, Syn contacted us and offered his help to convert to whole lot to database/php/sql. »CL1:DH: The way I see it, ADA is also great, because it fills a vacuum; there is no place like it on the net. Is that true, or are there other sites dedicated to Amiga demos, that can be compared with ADA? »CL2:z5: Difficult to answer this one myself. There are some great demoscene websites but what I missed from those were screenshots. I certainly don't have the feeling that I am creating something that has been done before. Otherwise, I would not have bothered starting such a big project. The more resources there are about the demoscene, the better. Each and everyone has its positive sides. I really do hope that it offers something different. »CL1:DH: What are the good sides of ADA, and what sides do you think still needs to be worked on. »CL2:z5: We are definately most proud about the screenshots. We try the best we can to get the highest quality screenshots and to show them as close to the original demos as possible. We have a lot of respect for the productions and we hope that this shows in the screenshots. Also, we are quite happy with the way everything is presented on screen: a very simple and easy navigation. Nothing fancy but doing it's job. The site does need a couple of things though, especially content wise: maybe some more general information about the Amigascene, maybe a dictionary with demoeffects, a forum... We do have some ideas ready for the new version. There certainly is room for improvement. We shall see. »CL1:DH: How much feedback to you get? Do the sceners like ADA, or has the response been less good? Do you think Amiga sceners in general are aware of the existence of ADA? »CL2:z5: Hmm... Difficult question. We don't get much feedback and rarely do we get feedback on new ideas. The activity of the visitors on comments and votes has not been as high as we hoped for either, which gets our motivation down sometimes. Although things seem to pick up a bit lately. Either people don't like to get active or not a lot of people know the site? It's a puzzle to us. On the other hand, we are STILL really surprised and happy about the feedback we get in our guestbook because nearly all of it is really very positive. You've got all these people writing positive things about it, yet very few spend a bit of time voting/commenting. I think it's mainly because Pouet is such a brilliant site :) The active demoscene seems to be there. »CL2:It's a pity really, because with the website, I just provided a framework. The really interesting stuff should come from the visitors, telling if and why they like this or that demo. I mean, wouldn't that make some interesting reading in say 5 years? Rewatching all those great memories, seeing them with the screenshots and reading about what people thought and felt about it. It would make the archive come alive. »CL1:DH: You are only too right. I think many know the site, but not many bother to show it, or comment on it. It is like that with diskmags too, sadly. Anyway, what people have worked with you on ADA, and what are they doing on the site? »CL2:z5: The team consists of only two people: Vanquish and me (z5). Vanquish does all the work where graphics is concerned: webdesign, converting screenshots and logos... Actually, the amount of work on the screenshots is huge. I do the content, select the demos, take the screenshots, do some php and html... We did get a lot of help from Syn, concerning php, sql, hosting,... The website would never have evolved so much without his help. Then there are the people who contribute with screenshots, especially from PPC releases. Most notably, FenriX, has contributed with a lot of really good screenshots on those PPC releases. »CL1:DH: Can we count on you to keep up ADA in the future, and is everything going according to plan now in regards to serverspace, provider, money to run it, external help and so on? If not, maybe you could write a bit about what you need, and who knows, some reader might decide to help you out! »CL2:z5: We are doing this for 2 years now and motivation is still as high as when we started, which is a good sign. Updating the site goes really smooth now. It only takes about one or two hours work each week, which is very reasonable, I think. I don't want to spend too much time on it and lose motivation after a couple of years. The logogallery should grow much bigger in the future. On top of that, I've got screenshots ready on my HD for another 100 high quality productions. After that, I think we will let visitors decide which demos to include. And we are working on the next version, which should feature some new things :). We're still not sure if ADA will become an archive of all Amiga demos, or an archive of the best Amiga demos only. I think we will leave this decision up to the visitors when the time comes. »CL2:As for running costs... we haven't got any. Everything is hosted on the free and excellent planet-d demoscene server. Although, eventually, the 50Mb webspace may get a bit too small. The thought has crossed my mind to build my own archive, with all amiga files stored in one place (as opposed to now, where each download is a link to another website). We will see about that. »CL1:DH: Now we are near the end of this small interview, but if there is something you want tosay to our readers, or some people you wish to greet, now is the time for it. »CL2:z5: Just want to say a big thank you to all people who have ever been in the Amiga scene and have created all this wonderful demoscene material. Respect! And special greetings must go to Ephidrena (the best ever), Jazzcat, Slayer, Skipp604, Scicco, Ransom (is the demo still coming?) and Mavey. »CL2:And ofcourse, many thanks to all who have supported ADA with comments/votes/screenshots,... »CL1:DH: With that, we let z5 have his peace, so he can continue to update and improve ADA Remember to go see his site for yourself, if you haven't already done so. Surely it is deserving of a bookmark in your browser!