Interview with avran / exmortis

Cremax/Nothing

1. Can you tell us about you and your group?

Sure, I thought this was the point of interviewing... ;) So, my name's Peter, but on the scene people know me rather as Avran. This year I've finished high school and I hope to start studying software engineering at University of Technology in Wroclaw (Poland). Besides, I'm a coder in the demogroup Exmortis. The group was founded in 1994 by me and Clifford M. (previously known as Cronos), and has expanded a bit until 1998, that means, today. Cureent members, besides me, are: Orion (coder), Clifford M. (graphician), Ellyn (graphician), Slaughter (musician), Zydel (3d), Zapman (3d) and Gandalf (friend-member).

2. What do you think about the progress nowadays in the demoscene?

I think it's the same as it always was. Progress has never been smooth, I feel it rather as "jumps" of produts' quality. Someone invents, for example, new effect, then people imitate it in their demos or whatever, until someone gets an idea about something new... Some time ago vectors, today bitmap effects and raytracing. What's the next?

3. Do you think 3D is making a better scene or boring one?

3D is good when it shows "something". It's really hard to make me impressed only by 3D programming technique, as I've seen tons of very good engines. What makes "normal" vector world interesting, is screenplay. I'm sick of sitting with Orion, watching a new demo, and commenting: "look, f***s up - no persp. correction" or "they should z-buffer that shit"; just because there's nothing else to watch. Of course, sometimes 3D kicks my ass, mainly when I see something I didn't do (and I wanted to), I don't know how to do, or I just don't know what the hell is this but it looks nice... :)

4. What do you think about making demos under Windows?

I've never tried to write a demo for windows, to be honest. But as we're working on a game (for windows), I have to say that there's no such really big difference, except for hardware support, which is far superior under windoze.

5. What platform you think supports the demoscene better? Do you think DOS will survive?

It will, but for how long? Did Atari survive? Or CPM? No, seriously. When software firms stop supporting DOS (e.g. no compilers, or even shitty VBE), it will die.

6. What you think about hardware "support" on demos?

Erm... Why did you use quotation marks? :)

7. Which is/was your favourite party (if you attended one)?

[crem, cancel that question]

8. What is your favourite demo?

I don't have a favourite demo. Every demo gets boring. But, to answer somehow, I like productions from Oxygene (unfortunately not active any more).

9. Would you want to contribute to the demoscene with anything?

I'm contributing like hell! :)

10. What do you think about diskmags?

The last diskmag, that was really good, was Imphobia. It's really hard to find an interesting diskmag. The last one, worth mentoining, was Wrotki#6. From time to time I like to read some articles related to scene, but just for pleasure. Unfortunately, they're usually outdated.

11. Are diskmags still necessary?

Sure. If people still read it...

12. What do you think about other media like irc, newsgroups, online-mags?

These are things that make present scene alive all the time, not only from party-to-party or letter-to-letter.

13. What groups do you consider "well-known" and in some way contributed to the scene?

(ex) Future Crew, Oxygene, Halcyon, Pulse, ACME, CNCD, COMA, Impact Studios, EMF with Plant, TBL, Triton, Orange, MFX, and so on and so on... The list almost has no end...

14. When do you think to release a new demo from your group? (we would like to know :)

If everything goes good (commercial project), we shall have time to make a demo for Gravity'98, in August.

15. One last question, what are your favourite music bands? ;)

Shit, again. Here it goes, the perfect answer: "My favourite music bands are... are... GOOD bands". Really. And various. Like Metallica, Massive Attack (their last record kicks ass), former Cypress Hill, The Beatles, Sting, Pink Floyd, Katarzyna Nosowska (you surely don't know :), Bjoerk (I don't have that special "O" with the line ;), Kult, many DJs and blah blah blah.