Interview with Zuikki

Published in:	The Charts #13
Interviewed by:	n/a
Date:	18. October 1994

Interview

The Assembly '94 has been a little triumph for Stellar that has won the demo-compo with Mindflow, and that also placed third in the intro-compo with Darkroom by Dweezil.

We managed to get in touch with Zuikki, one of two coders behind Mindflow, that together with Nose code the great Stellar demo. And we have asked him to reveal us some secrets about the making of the demo...


	
		Zuikki:
		I'm 20 years old guy from Finland. I study in Lappeenranta University of Technology. I have actually no scene-career, Mindflow is my first "scene-product". I joined Stellar in May '94, and I haven't been in any other groups before that. The same applies to Nose (Jyrki Saarinen). I have made some system friendly utilities and BBS doors, but not many bigger programs. I have almost all Rom Kernel Manuals, but no Hardware Ref. Manual.. So one might say that I'm not really the most likely person to win a demo competition.
	
	
		The Charts:
		You won the first prize in the demo competition at The Assembly 94 with Mindflow. Could you please tell us something about the making of this demo? (who did the most of the work, you or Nose? and things like this...)
	
	
		Zuikki:
		Well it was some day in January when Nose emailed me saying "Hey, let's make a AGA demo for Assembly '94". I wasn't sure at first, but then I thought "what the heck, let's give it a try". Note that me and Nose live over 100km apart, so we usually just coded for ourselves and then emailed the results to each other.

I think the oldest routine in Mindflow is that doom part. I started coding it in May, and finished it in mid-June. It took so long to make it work, because I wanted to use a bsp tree method, which is much more complex (but faster!) than the usually used raycasting. The doom routine was still quite buggy, and it used a 320*128 resolution and chunky2planar conversion. It also had only walls, no floor & ceiling.

In beginning of July I drove to Nose to code the landscape effect. Nose had already made some code for it, but it seemed so buggy that we rewrote it. This part we coded together in one day, though I improved it a little afterwards. I also wrote a little utility (in Amiga E language) that calculated the landscape heightfield and colors, and then one could draw the flying route using a mouse.

Then I coded a simple scale & rotate routine, mainly as an exercise, since the idea of bitmap-rotate is a bit too old to be used in a demo. However, this routine then evolved to that fractal zoomer seen in Mindflow. It was a two days job at maximum. Nose had a similar scale & rotate routine, which he modified a little and used in credits part..

The last week before The Assembly '94 was BUSY! I was the whole week at Nose's apartment. Nose had made earlier some vector gfx routines, which were then used in the texture cube and gouraud city. I fixed most of the bugs in doom, added floor and ceiling, and changed it to use a copperscreen. I also had to code a similar "mouse-router" for it that was used in landscape. The gouraud city was coded in hurry at Friday night, that's why it was so ugly.. :) I'd say that at least 80% of Mindflow was done during that last week.

At Friday night we also noticed that exit problem on slow machines, but couldn't find the bug so it stayed. On slow machines Mindflow doesn't restore OS view in exit, so the screen stays blank. However the machine doesn't crash, you can even restart Mindflow if you type it blindly.. :) The bug doesn't appear on A4000/040, which was the machine used in coding..
	
	
		The Charts:
		What do you think of the overall demo-competition at The Assembly '94 and of the demos by Virtual Dreams and Parallax?
	
	
		Zuikki:
		The Parallax demo (Drool This) is very impressive, especially when seen on monitor. On big screen it's impossible to see if a effect uses 1*1 or 2.5*2.5 pixels, that's why Mindflow seemed to be so fast and Drool This didn't. Also I think that Parallax' doom engine failed to work properly on A1200, at least it looked quite different in A4000.. :)

Virtual Dreams' Breathtaker is quite crap in my opinion. It's just precalced animation.. It surely looks great, but in demos you are supposed to calculate even some of the effects realtime..
	
	
		The Charts:
		Was in your opinion a good idea to introduce the possibility to use the fast memory in the productions?
	
	
		Zuikki:
		It's great to have some fastmem, mainly because of the speed.. But I think that 2MB is enough, since this is the most common fastram configration.
	
	
		The Charts:
		How did you like the winning intro by Pygmy Projects?
	
	
		Zuikki:
		It was great! When I saw it on screen, I said to myself "If intros are THIS good, demos are going to be unbelievable.." But luckily this wasn't the case. I think that Pygmy's G-Force could have easily won the demo competition also, but I'm glad that they decided to relase it as an intro.. :)
	
	
		The Charts:
		Which are the best demos so far this year in your opinion?
	
	
		Zuikki:
		To be perfectly honest, I haven't seen much demos.. However, I liked Complex' Real and Sanity's Arte quite much, but I can't remember if they were released this year or not.. :)
	
	
		The Charts:
		What do you think of charts in general? Do you think they are necessary for the scene? Can they really give a view of the real valours of the people-productions?
	
	
		Zuikki:
		Well, I don't think they are necessary, but they surely give you a hint that who does what and who doesn't.
	
	
		The Charts:
		Tell us the names of some coders you admire (if there are any) and why?
	
	
		Zuikki:
		Hmm, that's quite hard question.. I actually don't admire coders very much, it's usually the design that makes demo good or bad. For example I enjoyed very much the Spaceballs' State of the Art demo, even if I know that it's crappy code and simple effects.. Nine Fingers wasn't so good even if it had better code and effects.
	
	
		The Charts:
		After glenz vectors and bitmap rotations, now the new fashion seems to be to code gourad-shaded vectors, and voxel and doom-like effects. What will be the next?
	
	
		Zuikki:
		It's hard to say. You can do amazing things with copperscreen, these doom and voxel effects are just a beginning..
	
	
		The Charts:
		What will you do now? Anything new coming out soon?
	
	
		Zuikki:
		Not really soon. I'm just waiting for my Warp Engine now.. :) We will code something someday, but it's hard to say when..
	
	
		The Charts:
		Well, thanks a lot for dedicating a bit of your time for our mag. Best wishes by all the The Charts-staff for your future projects.

Zuikki:	I'm 20 years old guy from Finland. I study in Lappeenranta University of Technology. I have actually no scene-career, Mindflow is my first "scene-product". I joined Stellar in May '94, and I haven't been in any other groups before that. The same applies to Nose (Jyrki Saarinen). I have made some system friendly utilities and BBS doors, but not many bigger programs. I have almost all Rom Kernel Manuals, but no Hardware Ref. Manual.. So one might say that I'm not really the most likely person to win a demo competition.
The Charts:	You won the first prize in the demo competition at The Assembly 94 with Mindflow. Could you please tell us something about the making of this demo? (who did the most of the work, you or Nose? and things like this...)
Zuikki:	Well it was some day in January when Nose emailed me saying "Hey, let's make a AGA demo for Assembly '94". I wasn't sure at first, but then I thought "what the heck, let's give it a try". Note that me and Nose live over 100km apart, so we usually just coded for ourselves and then emailed the results to each other. I think the oldest routine in Mindflow is that doom part. I started coding it in May, and finished it in mid-June. It took so long to make it work, because I wanted to use a bsp tree method, which is much more complex (but faster!) than the usually used raycasting. The doom routine was still quite buggy, and it used a 320*128 resolution and chunky2planar conversion. It also had only walls, no floor & ceiling. In beginning of July I drove to Nose to code the landscape effect. Nose had already made some code for it, but it seemed so buggy that we rewrote it. This part we coded together in one day, though I improved it a little afterwards. I also wrote a little utility (in Amiga E language) that calculated the landscape heightfield and colors, and then one could draw the flying route using a mouse. Then I coded a simple scale & rotate routine, mainly as an exercise, since the idea of bitmap-rotate is a bit too old to be used in a demo. However, this routine then evolved to that fractal zoomer seen in Mindflow. It was a two days job at maximum. Nose had a similar scale & rotate routine, which he modified a little and used in credits part.. The last week before The Assembly '94 was BUSY! I was the whole week at Nose's apartment. Nose had made earlier some vector gfx routines, which were then used in the texture cube and gouraud city. I fixed most of the bugs in doom, added floor and ceiling, and changed it to use a copperscreen. I also had to code a similar "mouse-router" for it that was used in landscape. The gouraud city was coded in hurry at Friday night, that's why it was so ugly.. :) I'd say that at least 80% of Mindflow was done during that last week. At Friday night we also noticed that exit problem on slow machines, but couldn't find the bug so it stayed. On slow machines Mindflow doesn't restore OS view in exit, so the screen stays blank. However the machine doesn't crash, you can even restart Mindflow if you type it blindly.. :) The bug doesn't appear on A4000/040, which was the machine used in coding..
The Charts:	What do you think of the overall demo-competition at The Assembly '94 and of the demos by Virtual Dreams and Parallax?
Zuikki:	The Parallax demo (Drool This) is very impressive, especially when seen on monitor. On big screen it's impossible to see if a effect uses 11 or 2.52.5 pixels, that's why Mindflow seemed to be so fast and Drool This didn't. Also I think that Parallax' doom engine failed to work properly on A1200, at least it looked quite different in A4000.. :) Virtual Dreams' Breathtaker is quite crap in my opinion. It's just precalced animation.. It surely looks great, but in demos you are supposed to calculate even some of the effects realtime..
The Charts:	Was in your opinion a good idea to introduce the possibility to use the fast memory in the productions?
Zuikki:	It's great to have some fastmem, mainly because of the speed.. But I think that 2MB is enough, since this is the most common fastram configration.
The Charts:	How did you like the winning intro by Pygmy Projects?
Zuikki:	It was great! When I saw it on screen, I said to myself "If intros are THIS good, demos are going to be unbelievable.." But luckily this wasn't the case. I think that Pygmy's G-Force could have easily won the demo competition also, but I'm glad that they decided to relase it as an intro.. :)
The Charts:	Which are the best demos so far this year in your opinion?
Zuikki:	To be perfectly honest, I haven't seen much demos.. However, I liked Complex' Real and Sanity's Arte quite much, but I can't remember if they were released this year or not.. :)
The Charts:	What do you think of charts in general? Do you think they are necessary for the scene? Can they really give a view of the real valours of the people-productions?
Zuikki:	Well, I don't think they are necessary, but they surely give you a hint that who does what and who doesn't.
The Charts:	Tell us the names of some coders you admire (if there are any) and why?
Zuikki:	Hmm, that's quite hard question.. I actually don't admire coders very much, it's usually the design that makes demo good or bad. For example I enjoyed very much the Spaceballs' State of the Art demo, even if I know that it's crappy code and simple effects.. Nine Fingers wasn't so good even if it had better code and effects.
The Charts:	After glenz vectors and bitmap rotations, now the new fashion seems to be to code gourad-shaded vectors, and voxel and doom-like effects. What will be the next?
Zuikki:	It's hard to say. You can do amazing things with copperscreen, these doom and voxel effects are just a beginning..
The Charts:	What will you do now? Anything new coming out soon?
Zuikki:	Not really soon. I'm just waiting for my Warp Engine now.. :) We will code something someday, but it's hard to say when..
The Charts:	Well, thanks a lot for dedicating a bit of your time for our mag. Best wishes by all the The Charts-staff for your future projects.