Magic:
Could you please introduce yourself to our readers? What's the origin of your nickname?
A friendly chat with
T$ of Alcatraz & Scoopex
Done by Magic of Nah-Kolor
Magic:
Could you please introduce yourself to our readers? What's the
origin of your nickname?
T$:
Hello readers, I'm T$. I'm on an interview now, and what's your issue?
Apart from that, I'm a Swabian guy living in a wine-growing town near Stuttgart who has recently upgraded to the 3rd decade, and started with the PC in the mid-80s. That's also the reason why I'm using T$ as my name since back then - Digger only accepted 3 letters in its highscore list, and T$ looks better than just TS, that's the whole story.
Magic:
How did you get into the demoscene? When did you start being active in the demoscene?
T$:
My first programming experiences go back to the 80s (starting with GW-BASIC and DOS 2.something), however this was mainly about adding external electronics for controlling Lego robots or other gadgets I've been constructing and experimenting with.
It took quite some time until the swapping of utilities, PD software, snippets and adventure games led my attention to those small "BBS addies" and "intros" which were also on those disks and were soon more interesting than the rest of the files: There wasn't an obvious purpose these programs were made for, but they looked amazing, ran damn smooth and often had good music as well - all within a few kilobytes.
After some research I found out about diskmags, and those in turn were full of "demoscene" stuff.
After being just a lurker scene-wise for a couple of years I started to get into contact with other coders as well as diskmag editors and finally decided to visit a scene party in the late 90s.
Magic:
What does your life look like today? What are you doing for a living?
T$:
Pretty busy ;) Being responsible for the map-making part of the company I'm working for is quite interesting, but also takes also some time as well. And you better make sure not to release bugs, or you'll end up being reminded of them at every bus stop in the next 30 kilometres everythere around here ;) Daily life and non-digital affairs including some non-scene organizing tend to fill up most of my nights (obviously, I'm pretty much an owl^^) as well.
Magic:
What motivates you to spend time on the scene anno domini 2010?
T$:
Basically the same as over a decade ago: Getting in touch with creative people, watching creative stuff, expressing my ideas to an audience which is worth it and partying on. And I like that there is hardly any other subculture which is both cozy and international, full of open-minded unique people which both know how to party and to be enthusiasts at the same time.
Magic:
Can you tell us something about your current projects? Can we expect a new raving tomatoes intro in 2010 for example?
T$:
You shouldn't expect it but rather long for it. Or fear and loathe it, as long as it stirs up emotions it is OK with me ;) Apart from that a music disk and diskmag-like engine is in the making, hope that Mudia Art does ring a bell. Also planned are two 96k games, another OHP release and some other 64b / 4k ideas without planned release dates. Sooner or later there will be a 64Bit WinAsm tut, too.
Magic:
What are your top 5 favourite demo scene releases from 2009 and why?
T$:
Damn, that was a hard one - most releases I came up with turned out to be 2008 ones or were made by Alcatraz or its members, which I won't list now since they're cream of the top anyway. Thus, the most memorable 2009 releases to mention are:
* Puls by Rrola, which pushed 256b quite a lot and was one of the few really astonishing entries (especially when looking at the source, which looks rather clean for what it does).
* Zvokz+Buenzli, the combined party experience which has the reputation of being cozy and relaxed without spectacular happenings, releases or organizing desasters since they've been well-established like that for years. However, it turned out that there is still space for like the nonstop barbecue (which suited the new location pretty well) or the postcard preparty teaser and balloon game: Demoscene my life me beautiful ;) Note that picking these two parties doesn't mean that the other ones were bad: Release-wise, 2009 was rather mediocre, but its parties kicked ass.
* The Wolverine compo, especially its best placed entries: This is what ends up when trying to match commercial advertising concepts with a bunch of overpartying sceners. Great work, guys!
* Koneko by bitFlavour, a demo with cardboard meets kitty design which works like a charm. Who needs technical perfection if we can has cuteness overload instead?
* Counterbalance by Bombsquad, a game made up by a simple idea, minimalistic design and control backed by a smooth playable (despite its visible flaws) engine. Worth playing for a while for mastering its levels.
And a cheerup piggy goes to GlitchBitch by Ananasmurska, one of the most memorable 4k entries this year.
Maybe you wonder why some of the popular crowd pleasers are mising, but the answer is simple: As long as it does not carry a catchy spirit even an astonishing demo with flawless execution and technical perfection alone isn't enough.
Magic:
What have been your best moments on the scene so far? Could you also describe your worst ones?
T$:
The best is a tough question, as there were a lot of them: The overall atmosphere of the tUM 99, 02 and 05 nights, the excessive demo marathon at MS 2002, the marvellous
Breakpoint 2004, UC 5,25 and 6.22 atmosphere as well as the experience of starting to make a 96k game right after the deadline and delivering it about 5 minutes before the compo. Other nice memories were a bunch of sceners raiding the local pub of the really tiny 0a000h location and confusing them by playing happy hardcore music instead of ol'granny's Heimatmelodien. And not to forget Evoke 2006, where some kind of art installation took place nearby, filled with alternative scene artists and their prosecco-holding admirers, which were pretty shocked after they realized that these strange so-called sceners were no longer just peeking in but had decided that their paper artwork igloo served pretty well as an infested beer pavillon. Speaking about the worst moments, the most disappointing ones were the large amount of gamers and crap kiddies at MS2000, which in combination with the rude security severely spoiled the spirit of the party. A similar downtime was the media coverage a few years ago, especially at Evoke 2007, where you were really waiting for the first boulevard TV reporter ending up with his camera shoved up into his rear entrance after heavily insensitive cam penetration. And the sadest ones were Sobec and Crest leaving us forever, may they rest in peace.
Magic:
Please write down your personal all-time coder top 5.
T$:
1. Nature and evolution: It's really interesting how such an inherently flawed and inefficient algorithm can be such effective due to extreme recursion and brute-force parallelism combined with amazing fault-tolerance mechanisms forming dynamics and patterns everywhere and in realtime.
2. All 256b and below coders: People like these show that even today in a terabyte and framework infested world there is still a place where coding is done in asm being pure recreational fun.
3. People like Tran or NeHe, who do not just dump open sources into the world but provide stuff others could really learn from and base their own ideas on instead of just copypasting and patching around.
4. Cooking: Basically, one starts with a rough idea of the result, then throws various ingredient in using a more or less random order, mix it up, test it, add some more stuff again and repeat those steps until you run out of time, ingredients or consider it good enough. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
5. Anyone sharing opinions, giving feedback, may it be technical or non-technical: Code is not just a bland tool but a powerful media of expression as well, and once you're aware of it you and your work can benefit from it while crafting your code. This an be compared to natural languages which are basically considered a matter of communication while still carrying an inherent amount of culture and history you can hardly describe in any textbook.
Magic:
Do you think quality and quantity of the releases on the demoscene are
decreasing? We are all getting older and older and have other
priorities and less time for the demo scene. Look at 2009 for example - not too
many really great demos released. Please share your thoughts on this topic.
T$:
I disagree - granted, 2009 wasn't an outstanding year, and the general
interest in artpacks and diskmags has dropped a lot within the last decade,
and there weren't that many great 64ks, which formerly were considered a demo
killer of the 2000s. However, 4ks have experienced several boosts since
then, most notably several iterations of programmable 3D, softsynths and
compression engines, and they are more vivid than ever. Not to mention new
categories like 4k procedural gfx, executable music (which sort of continues
the mutichannel tradition) or DIY hardware in the wild compos, which all can
be considered well-adopted and vivid. And there were quite a lot of
outstanding entries around 2008, There is some drain of talented musicians
and 2D artists, now that there are plenty of other places to share your work
with the public there's no need of entering the scene if you just want to
get famous. And something which actually can be a problem is the web2.0
style of consuming: It might be useful in case you can't get a glimpse on it
otherwise, but in general using those low-fi stream movies and factoid
fragments results in sacrificing bare metal real time, real bits approach,
which actually makes up most of the unique core of what demo scene
originally is all about.
Magic:
Do you look forward to Breakpoint 2010?
T$:
Of course I do. May I finally wreck the Rundsporthalle now?
Magic:
Thanx T$ for this friendly chat! Any last or wise words? Some greetings perhaps? Be my guest..
T$:
Nicht lang denken, Schinken schenken =) Or: Hope to see you next party, with a beer in one and a release in the other hand!
Magic & T$
Photos taken from Slengpung.