UCM22
.tHE .sIRIUS .cYBERNETICS .cORPORATION
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INTERVIEW with: COINCIDENCE and MISUNDERSTANDING/IMAGINA
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Hello again to another part of the "Interviews with Ex-IMAGINA-members"-series!
As it happened that IMAGINA was one of my fave bands on STE I'm very very
interested in the truth :-)...
UCM: Hello Misunderstanding. [iCEBREAKER ONE] How are you?
MIS: Hello I'm fine. After finishing a master in Computer Science I have been
working as a programmer for 4 years now. Primarly as a web developer. Now
I'm working for the biggest Norwegian newspaper (http://www.vg.no) as a
programmer and I'm enjoying it very much. Life is generally good and live
together with my girlfriend in our flat here in Oslo.
COI: I'm also fine, working as a Technical director of company dealing with
Cellular phones and Sms. Together with two other strange characters I
started this company soon two years ago... Telitas is the name of the
company, and http://www.biip.no is the web site... DIZZY TUNES is actually
working in the same company. And it's been really great to have contact
with him on a steady basis. He is one of those friends I always think
about, so I was really happy to offer him a job. Basically I am doing a lot
of programming and planning.
He is making Ringtones and stuff and is responsible for all of the content.
Life is good, working out and relaxing with my girlfriend in the evenings
and weekends. Me and MIS meet a few times a month doing something. (F.ex.
beer, playing games etc.)
UCM: So [iCEBREAKER TWO] please tell us a bit of your computer history (I hope
I won't bore people out there with this question :-)... So how did you
start computing and when did you became a member of the demoscene?
MIS: It started when I was 12 and got myself a C-64. I was very fascinated with
technical things and the basic on the C-64 was very intriguing. I started
to write in the examples from the C-64 book to get them to run. After that
I tried modifying everything until I figured out what was going on.
COINCIDENCE bought an Atari after he went to buy an Amiga in the store and
the said hey, why don't you buy an Atari it's cheaper and just as good. The
he persuaded me (it actually involved some physical arguments :) to buy an
Atari. So I started naturally with GFA-basic. We started making some games
in GFA. The classic Maniac Games that was never finished and a Dungeon
Master clone that wasn't even close to be finished. At this time I was
doing the programming and Coincidence the graphics. We were very fascinated
with the demo scene and we tried to learn assembler.
I tried to buy a book but it sucked and I gave up. COINCIDENCE bought the
book that was the best (Atari Internals or something) and after he finished
reading it, I was able to learn assembler.
Since we never knew many people that programmed, all our rutines were self
made. We just had to guess how other people did it. This usually involved
me programming an insanly complex version that worked but was very slow.
Then COINCIDENCE made a faster and simpler one and eventually we made
things that were near optimal. My first assembler routine was a raster bar
which was just some horizontal lines that nearly took one VBL. When Wizzcat
looked at it he went wow. And I don't think the wow was entirely positive.
Anyways since we were kids we didn't know the math involved for vector
rotation. So I took an example from Gfa basic which I couldn't understand
and converted it to assembler. This is the routine that we used in all of
our demos. And it's not vector rotation, it actually rotates all the points
with the full formula (12 muls) since I never figured out the vector part
in the example. After that we had much fun coding and we met some nutty
norwegians named IMAGINA that welcomed us to the crew and learned us some
secrets about coding assembler (most of all the secret of REPT). After that
we made some demos. Well COINCIDENCE made most of them anyway since I was
also focused on school and I played basketball at that time.
I made an intro for the IMAGINA/DELTA FORCE party and I made a demo which
involved a jumping reindeer (Systematic error).
I remember making a routine with 3 transparent circles for an intro or
something. At this time I was 17 or 18 (that was in 1991) and the Atari
scene was fading. No more games and the first Pentium came. COINCIDENCE
never gave up on the dream of making a shoot'em'up but he had big problems
getting the graphics for the game. At this time I gave up on Atari and
stopped using any computer exept in school. When I finished school I went
to the military service where I coded a vector intro for COINCIDENCEs game.
It got finished but the game was never completed.
COI: At first, MIS was the programmer of the two. I hadn't really thought much
about it before he made some dorkey basic games on the 64. But then again,
it really got me interested in the magic the lay behind it.
You write a few lines of some tricky language, and woops you've got an ugly
basketball beeing steered by the joystick. COOL eh?
Then as MIS writes, we got the book, read a lot, sweared a LOT, tried a LOT
and suddenly we started getting quite good at making things fly around.
What MIS had in complexity I had in simple solutions that worked. We were a
good team, discussing problems and tried our different solutions and
fulfilled them.
My best demo was the Cozmic Jam demo where I made an Inconvex routine with
stipling/shading which I am still quite proud and astonished about. To this
day I can't understand how I made it.. :)
These are some of my demos: Cozmic Jam, KulturMelk, Explotion and at least
10 more I don't remember. Then after a while the Atari scene went limp, and
I lost the interest together with MIS.
UCM: One of my favourite questions to former IMAGINA-members is... WHAT THE HELL
HAS HAPPENED back in the days? From one day to another the crew was
vanished from Atariland.
MIS: Well we were young and loved electronic music. One day we went to a Cosmic
Baby party and started raving. It was the music that attracted us to the
arrangements. What we didn't know was that it was a lot of drugs at these
parties. Well, we found that out eventually and had an expand of our
horizon with psycedelic experiences period (it was mostly acid). After a
while it got more and more intense and I lost interest because of the
people that was attracted to the scene. And I had other things to do other
than partying. COI just broke up with his girlfriend, lost his job and was
broke. By a series of coincidences he ended up taking his partying to an
other level (think freak brothers). At this time we lost contact for a
couple of years until we got contact again. I went to the University and
got my degree. COI got himself a PC and learned to program Delphi and the
Clarion. Now we stay away from drugs (we never took any hard stuff, it was
mostly Extacy and Acid) and lead normal lifes.
COI: Well, we just didn't vanish from Atariland.. I just vanished. Flying into
a wild period of houseparties and you know what... This lasted until I one
day grew up... Got a real job, working and basically started my "Normal"
life again. A crazy period, but also a period of learning and discovering
unknown things about oneself. But, every now and then I think of both of
these periods of my life..
These two are actually the most important times of my life this far. Thanks
to everybody for beeing a part of the points with the full formula it!! And
thank's for all the letters I got!
UCM: How many members had IMAGINA and can you remember them all?
MIS: Mistake : Was GFX man and coder, is now a programmmer and DJ
D-Jan: Was GFX man, is now an painter or something like that. He's actually
makin' logos for COI's company.
P-nut: Was a coder, is now a games programmer I think.
Outzider: Was a musician, makes radio adverts and celular phone ringing
tunes.
Lt. Earwax: Was a musician, has now a PhD in physics I think.
Dizzy tunes: Was a musician, makes celular phone ringing tunes.
Henning: (I remember only his real name): Coded s ome utilities, was at the
university at the same time as me. Maybe he got a PhD?
Nerve: Was a swapper has started a Linux company.
There are some more that I couldn't remember.
UCM: What are you and other IMAGINA members are doing nowadays?
MIS: We are doing fine. No worries. The last year we have gotten better contact
with many of the old members. It is very fun remembering the old times.
UCM: Are there any plans for a comeback? I heard you recovered some of the old
Imagina sources for unreleased productions? Is that true?
MIS: Yupp, I played around with Steem and got really inspired. So I found my old
discettes and tried to recover things. I thought everything was lost, but I
found a lot of code. The intro for the shoot'em'up was one thing I found
and it actually looked nice. So I thought I could brush up the intro and
release it some time.
COI: I'm actually waiting for DIZZY TUNES to get me some sourcecode he has lying
around. One with 7500 stars flying through space. Blew the head of those
who has seen it. Don't think it will blow someones head anymore, but it
would still be cool to release it.
UCM: Brainstorming! Just write down what comes to your mind when you read
following words.
COI:
A.miga - Blitter, slow processor.
B.rainiacs - Hmmm
C.ozmic Jam - Three or four months of hard work.
D.elta Force - Alot of hacks.
E.lectronic Images - Games
F.alcon - Atari Bankrupt
G.igabyte Crew - Hacks
H.ardscrolling - Sync
I.CC2 - Copyparty Demo
J.oysticks - IK +
K.ultur Melk - My first STE demo
L.ost Boys - Great demo's
M.aggie - Cool reading
N.erve - Ehhh
O.outzider - Moslem Avenger (Makes you think eh?)
P.irates (Software) - Fun
Q.uadralien - Ehhhh
R.ave-o-lution - Mods
S.ystematic Error - Cool demo, strange guy
T.echno - Extacy
U.nlimited Matricks - ehhh
V.entura Demo - ehhh
W.izzcat - Hallo Bitcha!
X.plotion - My second demo
Y.esterday (was it better?) - Life has just started
Z.Buffer - Sorting method
MIS: Those memories, those memories. I remember the time when the TLB ruled and
they released the megademo with the 3D game with a ship flying around in a
landscape. And the ULM megademo. Those were the times.
UCM: Any last words for the sceners out there?
MIS: Well I must say the same thing about Atariland as they say about dead
persons that you love: Atariland will never die as long as we keep those
memories alive in our heads. rt of the points with the full formula Nobody
can take that away from us. Remember to live the life in the present and
try to stop once in a while, and enjoy your life.
COI: I agree, Atariland is in our hearts.. (And my brain :) ) Life have to be
lived forwards, but will always be understood backwards!
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MC Laser/The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation [ mc_laser@atari.org ]
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http://tscc.atari.org
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