| Zine: |
Some time ago you were a member of Phenomena and did a couple of demos for this group. Now you are a member of Scoopex. Why did you change the group after having been a member of Phenomena for quite a long time? |
| Photon: |
I had a bad habit of NEVER getting demos ready for the democompos, like the BlenkVectors, for example, and the people in Phenomena were very good in reminding me of that. Blenkvectors was delayed for about 4 months, and that was because of a bug in the music-replay. Plus UNO, before he joined Phenomena, wanted to form Scoopex Sweden, but I convinced to join Phenomena instead. But then I changed my mind, and some other guys came along. Unfortunately, Uncle Tom has now very little time for music, as he's trying to sell his Furball Venture game, and Judas bailed out and stopped coding. But if there are any good coders, feel free to send a sample or call me up! |
| Zine: |
In almost every news section of the disk-magazines there were messages, that you changed your name to Protech. (Slayer told me the same!). But you didn't change your nickname, didn't you? Why? |
| Photon: |
Nope. I thought I'd change it when I joined Scoopex, but everybody said that I should keep my name, so I did. |
| Zine: |
There are many legends on the Amiga. Do you think you are one, too? What are your idols on the Amiga? What makes a 'person' a legend? Who are in your opinion, the amiga-legends. Why? |
| Photon: |
I'm hardly a legend, I mean, I've only made a few demos. Actually, I don't have any idols on the Amiga, although I think Tec is a very good coder. I guess a lot of coders are as good as me, it's just that THEY finish their demos, and I don't! What makes a person a legend is that he releases something which nobody thought could be done. Like Slayer's 'Seven Sins' demo with the BIG vectors. And then Promax slayed that demo with his Kill Victor. So I guess Slayer and Promax are legends. |
| Zine: |
You said you want to release your new demo at the ECES? You didn't! Wasn't the first price good enough? |
| Photon: |
Yes, it was...but at that point I was getting a lot of reply mail on the Stunner Dentro from people who thought I was a swapper, and I was running an article series about M-code programming in a Swedish Computer mag, I was trying to get my QIK-D-PAK cruncher sold, and was negotiating with Andrew Braybrook and Steve Turner about joining Graftgold. PLUS I was doing some programming on the PC (yeuck) for a friend of mine. So... I barely had any spare time. |
| Zine: |
You certainly know the situation at parties, when people are looking at you, like you were a god (ooohh look this is Photon!!!). What do you think about the persons who admire you? Tell me the most crazy event when talking to a fan! |
| Photon: |
Actually, I haven't noticed any of that... But I'm glad you think I have any fans! |
| Zine: |
What is your relationship to other Scoopex members in other countries? Do you communicate with them? Is there a leader in Scoopex Sweden? Are you the leader? |
| Photon: |
Well, I've talked to Slayer and Reward, and they seem alright. But I haven't spoken to anyone else except TMB, and he's really ambitious. I'm NOT the leader, Ranger seems to be in charge most of the time... At least he lets people join Scoopex Sweden without asking us!!! Suddenly, we had another BBS guy called Rabzi, but he was kicked out. |
| Zine: |
What do you think about the scene at the moment? Why do you want to be a part of this scene? |
| Photon: |
I think that someone has to come up with some new ideas soon (don't look at me!) or the groups will collapse, and all the good coders, musicians and graphicians will join a group of their own, just to be able to compete with the others. Look at most of the new demos (Substance, ECES invitation Demo etc) and look at the Credits list! But I don't know... Maybe that's a good sign. But mainly demos are getting less original and more '...but it's got nice music and gfx'-ish. An exception (TRAP #0) is Elysium by Sanity, that demo is really great! I'm hopefully moving to England to join Graftgold, so perhaps I will have to leave the (ob)scene. But if I have the time, I will try to stay in there. |
| Zine: |
Do you think compatibility is important? Are you interested whether your demos work on all Amigas or not? |
| Photon: |
If it's important for the effect you want to create, then I don't give a s**t if it doesn't work on an A3000T with 256K cache. But otherwise, it should work on all machines, except A1000. |
| Zine: |
What is your opinion about ray-tracing? Do you think it's hard to code a not very complex ray-tracing routine? |
| Photon: |
The raytracing algorithm is not half as complicated to code as the actual "design" phase. But if you raytrace spheres or plain surfaces (that means no Bezier curves or anything) it's rather straight-forward. But I don't know if I have the time or stamina to code a raytracer, because my other Amiga doesn't seem to work some of the time. But if I get an A3000, maybe I'll look into it. (I wouldn't like to sit for 1/2 hour just to see if my bug was fixed). |
| Zine: |
Are there still any hidden secret when programming the Amiga? |
| Photon: |
Not really. Well, that depends. If you read the Hardware Ref Manual, then it takes ages to learn anything, because there are no examples and no absolute addresses to learn. But if you read the Sys Progs Guide, the secrets are revealed much faster. But there should be some things left do discover. |
| Zine: |
Do you use a freezer. Do you look what way other coders solve the same problems? |
| Photon: |
Yes, I use the Nordic Power, because you can't take detect it like the Action Replay. When I didn't have a cartridge, I ripped instruments by resetting while the demo was decrunching. But if the file was encrypted, I decrunched it with its own decruncher, and let it relocate itself, and then resetted or saved the memory. |
| Zine: |
Almost every convinced amiga-freaks hates other machines. What do you think about Atari, Ibm-(compatibles), Next? |
| Photon: |
Atari is actually rather nice. But that's only because it has an MC68000. The graphics chip is rather painful, and generally you have to write much more code on the Atari. And it has no sample chip (although that can be solved with a Level6-int), and it has no blitter (except in the new ones, but you can only COPY memory with it. You can't fill, you can't draw lines, you can't make bobs, etc...but even on the MSX there was such a blitter.) PC-compatibles are SHIT unless all you want to do is edit text. Hopefully the PC owners will soon get tired of running 8086 programs on their 40-MHz 486's and buy an Amiga or Mac instead. The Mac, by the way is rather nice, but it has slow graphics (but not as slow as the PCs). The Archimedes is VERY interesting, just a pity that they didn't sell it cheaper, as the processor is cheaper to manufacture. But when I move to England I'll buy one and make Blenk- Glenz- Shine- Stencil- Vectors on it. |
| Zine: |
Everybody is interested in future productions. What are your plans? |
| Photon: |
Well, the most important thing is getting the job at GraftGold, cos it pays well, and then I can buy some hardware. The next step is making my own programming language called Optima which is much faster than C, as easy as BASIC and as code- tight as Assembler (well almost). It uses a new kind of variable handling, a new compiling method and unit structure. The program structure is exactly as flexible as the Assembler, so it can do everything you can do in assembler. You can also include raw assembler into the Optima source. It has a built-in editor and commandline (so you can check variable values directly) and you can choose to either compile or interprete it (the latter is about 5-10 times slower than compiling, but it's better if you have a long source which takes ages to compile. Then, when the program is finished and hopefully bug-free, you just compile it to a command file).
After that, I'll make a new computer model with 2 parallell 68020-like processors, and a "blitter", a sound chip and an IO chip, all on the same dye. I will design everything, including the BIOS and DOS. But this requires a lot of dosh (at least 100,000 pounds) so I'll have to save up first (or get in touch with someone who'll financiate the project). |
| Zine: |
In what way do you proceed when coding a new routine? Do you write everything down on paper first? What is the most efficient way to reach your goal as fast and as good as possible? |
| Photon: |
First I write the routine, as easy-to-understand as possible, then I check it for bugs, then I optimize it. Then I find out a new, faster way of doing it, and I code the new one, optimized and full with bugs, and erase the old one that worked. Then I spend 3 months trying to get rid of the bugs. When I started to code Machine Code (on the MSX) I wrote it down on paper first (cos I had no Assembler, I had to write it in hex code into the memory through a BASIC program) but since then I use the Assembler. The most efficient way, I suppose, is to think out the absolute fastest or best way of doing what you wanna do, and THEN write it down in optimized, bug-free code directly. But usually, only half of my routines work properly the first time I run them. That's cos I try to write'em down optimized from the start. |
| Zine: |
What do you think about The Eurochart? Do they refer to the reality? Do you agree, that charts NEVER show who's the best, but who's the most liked human being or group! |
| Photon: |
Well, if it is as you say, then I should be the 8th most liked coder in Europe, so I'm a bit sceptical to that theory of yours...the only thing in the charts that I'm put off by is that that Budbrained coder, whatever his handle is, is high on the list, and Chaos and Panther (of Sanity) is low. |
| Zine: |
Computer freaks are often social outcasts. Are you one of them, too? Do you live a normal life beside computing? What does your night-life look like? |
| Photon: |
Well, Einstein was also a social outcast... well, I don't know, when you try to get really good at something, whether it's programming, playing chess or forming theories about the Universe as we know it, you don't want to ruin your chances by boozing your brain into oblivion or waste a lot of time going on a holiday to Norway with your parents (bah!). But if you look at the world, it's the freaks that write history. Just look at persons like Einstein, Newton, Rockefeller, Galilei etc. If Galilei had, instead of spending 20 hours a day at the telescope, gone down to the local pub and have a chat with the salesmen or tailors, maybe he would have though that exploring the Universe was to much work, and decided to be a saddle-maker instead.
My night-life looks like this: snooore... snooore... snooore... blitter... copper.... dma slots... snooore... sprite machine architecture... But sometimes I stay up and finish a cool piece of code. But usually the code quality is directly proportional to the hour it was written in. You know what I mean. |
| Zine: |
What do you think about the following coders and their demos? |
| Photon: |
| Azatoth/Phenomena: |
A productive coder with some nice vectors and good-looking productions. However I don't see him as a Mighty God, as he sees himself in the Enigma demo. But then again, It was rather unnecessary of me to go on about those vector formulas, so I guess we've both made a few foolish statements. |
| Tec/Cryptoburners: |
Cool, fast, good-looking complex vectors, but boring objects. I like Heatseekers objects better, though his Blenkvectors are VERY slow. I don't if it was him or Tec who tried to pull that fractal stunt off, but it didn't work on me! |
| Slayer/Scoopex: |
Very good coder, though he hasn't released anything lately (like me!). Hopefully he'll make a Mental Hangover II before his military service. But it's cool discussing routines with him, although he seems to have swallowed a few Worlds of Vodka in his life. But he's cool n creative. |
| Wild Copper (Harlequin demo): |
Cool copper effects, coding-wize it's done somewhat like the Kaktus and Mahoney scrolls in NorthStar's two-disk megademo. But this one has a lot more bugs. |
| Freddy/Quartex: |
I've only seen one demo from him, and apart from the Camera Delay, there was no advanced coding in it. |
| Chris/Storm (Blitter disaster!): |
I was planning to do such a routine a while ago, using the blitter to draw patterned lines, but I never finished that demo (as usual!). Pretty good code but TERRIBLY ugly to look at and listen to. Greetings, by the way, to Herr Nilsson of Mega-Klopparna. |
| Mahoney & Kaktus: |
Cool dudes, THEY are really freaked (especially Kaktus). Mahoney is the better coder of the two. But now they seem to have stopped coding, at least Kaktus. They invented some really cool effects. |
| Celebrandil/Phenomena: |
A very good mathematician, and a creative coder. We're friends, but I'm so jealous, because he's won every democompo he's entered, and he makes the demos in just a week, or at the party. I spend weeks just optimizing my routines, and I never win anything. Sigh! But maybe that's because I never finish the demos in time for the deadline...? |
|
| Zine: |
Your favourite: |
| Photon: |
| Demo: |
An old hidden line vector demo from Tai-Pan (the atmosphere), Elysium by Sanity (the coding), and Enigma (the music and GFX). |
| Coder: |
Slayer/Scoopex and Celebrandil. |
| Musician: |
Firefox/Phenomena |
| Graphic artist?: |
UNO, of course. |
| Game: |
Gravity Force (really!) and Datastorm by Sodan. OLD games, huh? My own Tetris clone on the swedish school computer 'Compis'. The 'Nemesis' games on the MSX, Uridium and Green Beret on the 64. Paradroid 90. Elite. |
| 'Real' music-group: |
Jarre (of course), Kitaro, Pet Shop Boys, some classical music, one or two Hip Hops, one or two Reggae tunes, all Beatles songs, and of course Vikingarna and Sven-Torkels Saxparty 79. |
| Food? (Swiss chocolate???): |
Pizza, spaghetti and meatballs, Watermelons, Sill and Potatis, and File-Milk with Muesli. And...PEPSI!!! (But not at the same time). |
| Computer: |
The Amiga, of course!!! But I'd rather have an A500 with a 40-Mhz 68030 than an A3000, which is a hybrid. The Archimedes is also good, cos it's fast and powerful, although it's RISCy coding on it. |
|
| Zine: |
What do you think about game-coders. Aren't some of them better than the best demo-coders? Have you ever planned to code or have you already coded a game? |
| Photon: |
Well, in a way they are, cos they concentrate on getting it done rather than making it better than everybody else. But of course 90% are crap coders. Have you checked out "CodeMaster's" Advanced Tennis Simulator? It's about as fun as sticking your head into a blob of dung and take a deep breath (through the nostrils). I've written down about 10 original game ideas, cos I think it's more important to make a fun game than to make a good game. Like Gravity Force, for example, there is no graphics to mention, the sound is scarcely adequate, and nobody can say that it has ANY advanced coding whatsoever. But it's fun to play, and that's what counts. I played it until I finished it, and the only bad thing about the game is that it doesn't have an end-of-game gratification! |
| Zine: |
What do you think about Sex, Drugs and Rock'n Roll? |
| Photon: |
I like'em all. Except Drugs and Rock'n Roll. |
| Zine: |
Tell us something about your hometown Eksjo. |
| Photon: |
Population: 10000. Amiga-owners: 100-150. Coders: 2. FUN rating (on a scale from 1 to 10): 0. |
| Zine: |
Are you satisified with the life you're living at the moment. What goals do you have in your life? |
| Photon: |
No I'm not. I'd like to have the muscles of Arnold S, the looks of Mel Gibson, the stamina of Said Aouita and the fingers of Liberace. But then I'd look like shit, wouldn't I...For my goals, see section 1.4.8 of the Hardware Reference Manual, or the 'Future Plans' section in this interview. |
| Zine: |
Now feel free to fill the next lines with ascii codes... |
| Photon: |
OK. ! " # $ % & ' ... What is there to add...? Well, buy my games if you like'em, and remember that if you buy a program that you like, you BOTH tell the software companies what kinds of programs you want, AND the hardware developers what kind of computer you like. If you don't the Amiga could well die out in a few years. And DON'T buy the fucking CDTV. They refuse to call it a computer, and so do I. Wait for someone to launch a CD-ROM interface instead, so you can use your own (or buy a cheap) CD player for your Amiga! It'll be a whole lot cheaper. |
| Zine: |
THANKS and best wishes! |
| Photon: |
DITTO |