What are your origins (roots)?!

[slippy]

Hey,

I'm quite curious about what your origins are ...

to start this thread here's where I come from and what I'm doing nowadays

in 1983 with an age of 9yrs I had my first contacts to a Commodore VIC-20 with 3.5kb RAM (wow)
I used to type some stupid listings from computer magazines like - if anybody still nows - "Happy Computer" and stuff ...
later on in 1984 my uncle bought an ATARI 800XL with 64kb RAM and a (in german it's been called "Datasette") tape recorder - here I began to code my first BASIC "games" ... heheh - OMFG ...

in 1989 I've become proud owner of an ATARI 1040STFM ... and sliding into the scene around 1991 beginning to code 68k ASM ... here're two of my projects I did within 1991-1995 ...
Sid Sound Designer (1992-94) and a stupid demo which gathered 1st place in 1992 at the Megafun Party in Mouveaux/France.

then in 1995 I bought myself a Pentium 90 with 8MB RAM and quit the active scene ... although I didn't code anything I watched the activity all the time ... since in 1998 I started coding stuff again - almost for myself - not releasing anything - until june 2007 And there'll be more to come ... pretty sure ... as I licked some blood lately 

Nowadays in real-life I'm "senior application developer" responsible for coding/enhancing a really cool engine/framework for some business stuff on the mobile market in Java ...

So if you're curious who's typing that s*it here ... here's a photo showing me on the right side (that guy with the cap) at the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge in Franfurt/Main Germany ...

Anyways ... looking forward to read your storys ...

SLiPPY

[Jim]

Some more great biographies here http://dbfinteractive.com/index.php?topic=407.0.

Jim

[Clyde]

I started out with a Commodore 64 when I was mere 8 years old ( makes me feel really old now ), taught myself basic programming from various books "Step By Step" and "Your Commodore", and a bit of 6510, think I got some of that from "Commodore Disk User" as well as "Commodore Format".

I got into graphics mostly on the C64 after I bought the awesome Creatures game, and "Saracens Paint" was pretty cool and CDU had an Charset designer which helped me along.

Took a break for a few years, and dabbled a bit with Blitz Basic 2 on the Amiga.

And later bought a PC and discovered Blitz Basic for the PC, as well as meeting some really cool people. Saw Shockwaves advert for GFX demos which I thoughourly love, and Joined DBF do lend a hand with graphics.

Not been in any major big name groups as such apart from DBF - which pulled off lots of stunning advertures in basic, which was great fun and a laugh. Learnt alot from Mr Shockwave.

And as a cool and fun hobby still now and again produce demos under the group name of Gravity.

Cheers,
Clyde.

[benny!]

@slippy:
nice topic.


@topic:
short version for now

started off with a CPC6128 and a beautiful green monitor. began programming some simple
basic stuff after getting tired of playing all the time.

bought an amiga2ooo then and after of-course playing some months with it - I start to code
on it using various languages ( basic, modula, assembler ). beside my scene activity I was
quite interested in all the bbs-/modem-scene (the era before the internet boom).

then I bought an a12oo using the cool AGA chipset. I hoped that the amiga era never died
and refused to buy a pc for quite a long time. I even thought about quitting all my computer
activities when I realized that the amiga era got to its end.

but well - being a computer addictive I bought a 486-DX2 (or something like that) and get
used to the DOS-/Windows stuff which I now really love.

I was in several scene / bbs groups when I owned the amiga / cpc...

to be continued

[Shockwave]

Hehe, I realised that I had not finished my little biography so thanks for the cool topic Slippy Also it's great to see the face behind the name so thanks also for posting the pic

I put in the original topic that I got my first scene contact from the magazine "Zero" and went from there, well this is true. and I became more and more interested in the demo scene and was a member of several groups, some of them;
Hanissis 5, Sepultura, Wizzcat, etc. .. I was even in a group called Painbox with some members of the silents uk. Back then I was an artist, I never did much coding.. When things got really interesting for me was several years later, I had no contact with the scene any more.

For all I knew the scene didn't exist any more I bought a playstation 2 to play Wipeout and it had a disk of demo programs.

Amazingly to me, one of them was a basic programming language called "Yabasic", you could write software using the d-pad as a keyboard! then you could save the software off to the memory card.

I had taken programming in college and over the years had interepersed my drawing with periods of programming, soon all my past came back to haunt me.

I began looking at some of the examples and then I found the yabasic forums on the internet, I programmed as many demo effects as I could, I made dozens of them, several games too, I made a pacman clone, a version of battlezone etc etc..

Some were even published on the covers of playstation 2 magazines
Eventually I became a moderator and then the administrator of the Yabasic forum when the owner dissapeared.

I met a guy called Franck Chevassu on that forum, also known as Parabellum. Franck is a great programmer, check his latest project here; http://vectrex-emu.blogspot.com/ (Tell him I sent you! He has a blog, you can comment in it). Franck and I both found Yabasic very charming but we hankered after the days when we were in the scene and searched for a way of re-creating the old days.

I don't know why we chose Blitz Basic, it could have been any language really, but we went for Blitz.. Remember that at this time we had never even heard of sites like Pouet and the DBF board was non-existant.

We quickly coded some demos in Blitz, classic shit like dot balls, sine scrolls and all that good stuff. Trouble was that blitz was pretty shit at doing what we were doing.. It's a great games creation tool but not good for demo coding.
We still persisted and found that there was enough interest in Blitz demos over at the blitz basic forum to warrant setting up a blitz demo group Purely for fun really.

Our interest in Yabasic was less and less so I handed to forum over to Jim, there was another guy on that forum who I did not get along with at the time too.. We set up the internal board and recruited some team members, we had a musician called Fash and a gfxer called clyde, we later recruited more coders.

The first message board was merely a meeting place for the group DBF but quickly became popular with over 200 members... Eventually of course we used better tools than blitz basic and ultimately the message board became more important than the group, eventually the group DBF closed but the board lives on and has evolved into something unique I think.

ANyway I may well come back to this biography of the board and edit it, it's sort of cathartic to write about it....

There are a lot of blank lines that need filling in my text above!!

[taj]

My origin is (0,0,0).

[benny!]

My origin is (0,0,0).

Mine is the end of www.

[combatking0]

I started with the humble Atari 1200.
It had a cart slot and a tape drive.

Then I moved up to tinkering with my friend's Spectrum 48K, and eventually I got my own C64.

Many years later, I moved on to a windows 98 computer and started to learn HTML, JavaScript, ASP, PHP and CSS.
I have since abandoned ASP though.

[slippy]

@benny!: so that's your URL, eh?!

Mine is the end of www.

http://www.endofwww.com/

or is it this one here

http://www.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/~em06/

[benny!]

@sl!ppy:
lol ... didn't know the links ... cool !!!

[va!n]

@Shockwave:
Wow, very interesting read... btw, how and where did you learned how to code all such stuff and your first intro/demo effects? ^^

@all:
Ok, now its late here but i am listening to some cool trance streams and i will try to tell something about me. So lets start the show...

I was born in 1975 in Herne, a town in the centre of the so callled "Ruhrgebiet" in the middle of Germany, near to Bochum, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen (yes, the place of the football team Schalke 04)... Until 29.11.1986 i lived with my mother and my stepfather in a little two room flat and until this time i only played like helll with lego, lego train and esp with lego technic and created some creative things, hehe. About two years before i got a small and my first game computer called "Der Kluge Otto".
This was just a "simple" plastic box with 3x3 buttons (each in another color). If you pressed any button this buttons light turned on and you heard a special ton note (each buttons had its own ton note). This little box had 9 inbuild games and i had some fun with this box...

The 29.11.1986 was the date when i had my first housing removal and i moved with my family over two another bigger flat where i got my own room *yeah*... The new place was nearly outside the town centre and it was a small multistoried building settlement where a lot ppl and even some younger ppl lived.

At Xmas 1986 i got my first real game console with a small TV. It was an old and used Atari2600 with three game modules (afaik Frogger, PitFall and something i can't remember)... I was so happy with my first TV and to play things on a TV i have never dreamed off... I tried to buy some old games for a very low price with success, where i have spend all my money.

Fortunately we had a videothek in our settlement where it was possible to pay for rental business per day a game. They had really a lot of Atari2600 games. It was a real paradise! Sadly it was not possible in such days for a normal guy to clone such a hardware game modul I played a lot of games alone or with my younger neighboard guy.

At my birthday in June 1987 i got my first brandnew Commodore64 II Computer + Floppy 1541 II which was very amazing for me! I was in the 5th or 6th class and my scool-backpack was more filled with C64 disks as with needed scool books or other related scool things, because swapping in the classroom was standard and ofcourse very cool!  To bad, then the teachers controled the backpacks of all and you had a lot black disks

The firsts two days i hated the C64, because i only got an input screen "basic v2" with a prompt and i thought wtf is that? Two days later an older neighboard son helped me and has copied me some games... I began to understand how to use this cool machine, how to load games and how to start basic programming... I really liked this time and i am sure a lot of you may agree, it was still one of the best times.... old but still gold!! I began to swap disks like hell and i tried to spend enough money each month to buy MagicDisk64 and GameOn64 paper-disk-mags (afaik only available in germany but very popular and i think nearly every german C64 user know this magazines)... later i startet to buy some of the paper-diskmags like Input64 from "Markt und Technik"... I buyed some C64 related papers, even some coding related special issues... i started to code more and more simple basic programs... Nothing really special... I tried and learned it all myself just by experience... i managed to code my first very smooth pixel by pixel scroller in basic...

About one year later my mother gave away my so beloved C64 with all its equipment and my MagicDisc and GameOn collection like my own coded program disks to one of her girlfriend You can't believe how disappointed i was at this time... This all only happened, because it was my birthday or xmas, where i got a brand new Amiga500 computer! I had to use the Amiga, like the old C64 with my small TV...

I really hated the Amiga the first time, because due fact of this machine i had to give away my C64 where i never agreed and their was just a so silly called "Workbench" disk.. i thought, no game inside? On the next days the older neighboard son tried to explain me that there is more input screen like on the C64 and that i had to boot a disk to type something... Due fact of this, i thought what for a shit machine, i want to code in basic and peek/poke things, hehe...

This guy still had some cracked games like "Test Drive" and some other games... When i saw the games i was overwhelmed of its great graphics.... so many colors and so detailed... wuuahaha.... amazing great! i began to love the machine for playing but i tried out how to work with the input part (console or on the amiga the so called CLI)... i got from another person one of the first disk/filemanager called "CliMate"... it was a nice but simple tool... i started and tried to stufy executeables files with an HexEditor, study DiskFormats like BootBlocks, Loader... so i started to modify highscores, replacing sound effects, graphics and so on (even on NonDOS disk == disks only working with a trackloader)... i just learned by trying and doing and see what happens ^^

Later i got a StarLC24-10 printer and a 1084 monitor... I worked and played with the Amiga500 until 1993 and i tried to understand some ASM sources i got from a friend who was in the crackerscene and i tried to learn Amos, E and tried some exotic languages.... It was the time where i played like hell and i had 4 full diskboxes with all latest games! This business was to danger, even i had some warez still not released that time. Things got to danger...  I started to kill more and more copies and started to extend my intro and demo disk series... and more and more freeware / legal scene releases like games, demos ....

Somewhere end of the 80th i had my first practical course in a computer shop for some weeks... the team was like a family to me, really great and i would never forget this great time! This team has carried forward me to my first computer mess "Hobbytronic" in Dortmund and i got more and more contacts by help from the team/company. I saw the the premier of the world new Amiga CDTV ^^

Du fact of the computer mess, i got a flyer and got in contact with a some years older guy from my town who sold demos and was interested in my demo collection too. We meeted us and we got best friends for some years... This guy was musicain in the demoscene and well known... he saw some of my graphics and heared to some of first modules i did and so he told me that he is in the demoscene and if i am interested of doing some graphics and music O.o  I did so ^^  With the time there have been 4 well known scene guys from my town (TRSI, Vanish/Interactive/.../Radical Rhythms) and we all had great contact and we have been good friends...

One of this guys and a good friend of me this time, has worked for the XCopy company Cachet, marktleader on amiga! Afaik it was 1993 when Cachet wanted a promotion intro for the next comming WOC (World of Commodore) mess in cologne... So 4 guys (like me) have build a team and the one did the code, while the other did the music, the Cachet guy was responsible for texts and i did logos and the endscroll font)...  The promotion intro has official been released by Cachet on the mess and only to registed users. (i still must have a copy of this intro/disk)... The promotion intro was called "necromantic clouds" by cachet for the A500 ^^

In winter 1993 i did my first travelling in my life...  it was "TheParty III DK" with the party bus from bremen, where i meeted Twice/Lego (Bastian S.) and some other guys like Chaos/Sanity =) I must really say, this was my first but however the best demo party i have ever seen!! Sadly i don't had a camera nor any photos of the party nor photos with my person on it... However i know some ppl taked photos from me too...

I drived to this party with my A500 + Monitor and 4x80 disk boxes full of amiga demos only!!! I was sooo crazy, but i was young, hehe.... After this great time, until 1996 i had some really extreme shit problems in my life but not important to talk about. I was still active but more in the background... 

From 1993 to 1995/1996 i think, i traded some stuff on different BBS sytem like the legend scene bbs "Los Endos" in germany with an A500 with 1MB and 1 Floppy Disk only (to crazy ^^) ... This time i got in contact with some more sceners and in 1996 i have build my own demogroup "Secretly!"... We released a lot of tunes, some intros, demos, games (32k games for example).....

The time from 2001/2002-2006 it was still around the group... but since 2007 and since me have my first car i will try to be back in scene and on a lot of parties to meet some old friends/contacts and hopefully to release soon something nice

yes, that is my little overview...

[benny!]

What an excellent report, va!n. Brings back lots of memories. Well written. Thx a lot!