How did you start?

[Shockwave]

We have had the really cool topic called "the memories", this is close but more focussed on the moment that you decided to start in the scene.. For me, I'd always been interested in typing in listings from magazines and making my own programs but I'd never really gotten into the scene, though I suppose that you could call some of the things I'd programmed (scrollers, starfields, bobs) demo effects.

I remember watching Amiga demos by Tristar, Wild Copper, The Top Boys, Alph Flight, Razor 1911 and more on my friends Amiga. This was in the 1980's. An A500 was about £500, Ansel worked with his father, digging ditches to get the money to buy his Amiga and I used to go around there to watch the demos he had.

I t was inevitable that I would get an Amiga, I remember watching the RSI megademo and Trilogy megademo on the Amiga soon after I bought it.

For me though , the defining moment when I knew I had to get into the scene was when I saw the workbench demo by Wild Copper. A really cool french demo. All it consisted of was a spinning mouse pointer and a 2 bitplane sine scroll but it was a world away from the stuff I'd been doing on my Spectrum and C64.

The first "scene" contact I got was a guy Called "Danny" I got his name out of a magazine called Zero, Also another guy called Ian from TCC Freestyle Uk. I was lucky enough to know a guy called Graham Turner aka Mr.T ^ Razor 1911, he went on to join Nemesis and Skid Row so I always had the latest 1-3 days old stuff and found it easy to get good contacts which was a good platform for my graphics.

Well, that is where I started.... I'm still here!

[Clyde]

I got into being a fan of the scene, from ordering a few Censor Design demos from a PD company in Commodore Disk User. Fell in love with what they were doing, and it to say somewhat more interesting to me then games. Although, what got me into creating gfx was Creatures / Retrograde, those graphics were the biz. And there was a running article in Zzap 64, called Diary Of A Game, and it showed close up's of the graphics and I copied how the colours were place with an art package called Saracens Paint, and studied captured ones via Action Replay. And made many animated sprites of my own.

I also discovered about Character sets, for using as background graphics. And made alot of scenary bits and pieces.
I was totally hooked on gfx, as all I could really do code wize was the basic programs from the user manuals. I did tinker, but at that time I didnt pick things up too easily when it came to that side of things. My brother was all into 6510+ Assembler, and he did when he was interested teach me a few bits.

Sadly though, alot of the Disks are corrupt, and if they were in working order, I wouldnt be able to access them as the disk drive is knackered.

I'm actually a bit dissapointed / gutted that I didnt get involved in the Commodore64 scene - I may of been lame compared to some of those pixel pushers, but I guess I'll never really know. I didnt know where to go about getting info on contacting people, as for onething I didnt have a means at getting at the bulletin boards that some of the Amiga demos that I'd watched mentioned about.

And then I moved to Spain for 2 years, and as it was so damn hot. Especially for a British citizen of that age, I didnt really pay much attention to the C64. As swimming was what I mostly got upto after School. I think, there was a period of about roughly 10 years, until I got slowly back into computing. Inbetween mind, I did have a MegaDrive / 32x and the Saturn, also a PS1. But didnt really have what you'd call a proper computer, until I bought myself my first PC. After working all through the summer and also a little assistance from the bank.

I got back into it when I was at PC World looking for new bits and pieces for my machine. And I remember seeing Blitz Basic out for Windows. And I went wow, and remember it very well from the Amiga magazines, and I bought it really out of nostalgia value. I tried out all the examples with it, and did attempt a few games. But I was still very much into getting back into graphics again, and after sometime with dabbling with pixels; and finally getting a 56k Modem. Saw some really neat 3D stuff from some guy at Blitz Coder.

And then a few months down the line and doing my usual browsing after work, saw an advert for some group wanting an gfx artist. Initially I thought, hang on son their probably after a pro or someone a bit better then what Im capable off, but I thought- well there's no harm in trying, so I replied; and sent off some examples of my logos. Not really expecting a reply. And was magically surprised, I was hired. And now I can blame ( and thank ) Shockwave and his DBF crew for getting me into all this gfx demo antics and malarky.

And if it wasnt for them starting an internet code forum with a difference, main aim on Special Effects. I dont think that I would of ever thought I'd be coding as a hobby and in a crew of my very own. As I only did a few small demos to inspire others onto the bandwagon. And nowadays, I tend to be doing more IDE'ing the pixeling.

You wouldnt believe how long this took to blooming write, so I best stop otherwize my doctor isnt going to be best pleased. What I do want to do, is to take this opportunity in thanking everyone I've met in the various forums and msn contacts, along my adventures. I've learned a heck of a lot from you all. And Cheers it means a great deal.

Hey I may not be up their with the best, but I enjoy and have fun with what I do, which is the main thing. And my motto in life is, if I can do it anyone can do it.

And that concludes my little tale of starting out to present times.

Cheers and bless you all,
Clyde.

[thrawn89]

Well, Im not really in the 'scene', I just hobbie code right now, Im doing a rubik cude solver right now in ogl...Ive coauthored ploader which we should have a 'final' version out soon...a lot better than the original. Ive used FB a lot for school projects, I made an app to create, edit, and test vocab lists, Ive also made another to parse a dictionary and determine which words can be made up of element symbols [came up with about 200, my favorite is 'CH + O + C + O + La + Te'], made another to highlight a set of about 80 words in over 1200 lines of latin text, Ive made yet another for a slideshow in ogl for chem....Im also currently makeing a remake of Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600, that should be done soon...

Anyways so yeah, I just code for hobbie, not in the scene, considering I will be a senior in high school next year, I plan on attending WPI college to get a degree in CS/Robotic engineering...for those of you who dont know about WPI, its near MIT but way better...

Anyways, Ive been coding for 3 years...took a class in BASIC [QuickBasic 4.5], and one in C++ [M$ Visual 6.0] my freshman year, and took an independant study on Java this year...most of the stuff I know Ive been self taught

I originally found out about fb by looking for tutorials on how to project...found rel's tut and eventually found my way to fb.net

Well, thats basically it...so yeah,
Matt

[relsoft]

I'm not really into any scene or discipline for that matter. I'm a mix it up guy.  Applications today, games tomorrow and demo the next day. :*).  I've always loved GFX demos even when I wasn't on the net.  Without the internet, the coolest I was able to do was a rotating 3d prism without perspective and a pseudo-3d starfield . :*(. The koolest game I could make was a galaga and an arkanoid clone all in QB screen 12 with play for sound fx and inkey for input. :*)

GBgames.com changed all that. After visiting the site, I found out kool things to do with my 486. That wa like the year 2000. :*)  Toshi's demo compo introduced me to democoding.  I still remember me almost falling off my chair when I rad Optimus' "Into the fight demo".  Although I know how to do some of the things, I neven knew that you could do it that fast in Pure QB. :*)

Yep, ITF ran at aan amazing speed on a 486. :*)

Code lives in Spaghetti City but ran very fast on a 66mhz machine. :*)

[zawran]

I started out with the C64 first time it was released, I think it was around 1982 somewhere. I started doing basic, but soon moved into asm. I did some games and a load of intro/demos with it. I managed to find some guys who had a scene group and I was invited to join them. They were only doing Amiga stuff though, so I got myself an Amiga 500 and started learning asm on that (I later on got an Amiga 1200 as well). The group was called Plasma Force and contained of a bunch of guys situtated in and around Copenhagen,Denmark. We did a good deal of demos and a couple of our members also did some stuff with members from The Silents. One of our friends were PET of DDD (Danish Demo Duo) who had their really cool Copperdemo as part of the Dexion Mega Demo. I attended a couple of demo parties (like The Party in Ars, Denmark), but I never really did like the big parties. So I only went a couple of times. I mainly stuck with our internal small weekend parties where the group and some friends of other groups got together to code, do graphics and music. We had a blast at those.

Around 1989 I dropped out of the scene and didn't use a computer again until around 1992, where I got my first PC, a 486 SX I think it was. But it wasn't until I one day came across BlitzPlus/Blitz3D that I got interest in coding again. The appeal of using a basic language to do something cool looking in no time was too great, so I bought BlitzPlus and started coding away. I have made a fairly large number of demos with it, and later on have bought both Blitz3D and latest BlitzMax. Lately I have made a library of functions/subs for FreeBasic, but I have yet to use it for anything cool, but I will probably end up doing a retro looking demo thing sometime soon.

[TinDragon]

Started on a Vic20 with the basic that came with it, never made that much but had fun. Got an Amiga 500 and messed with the basic that came with that but it was slow and crap, got Amos when they came out and made alsorts of little games and a few demo like effects, even had Amos3d and the compiler for it. Got Amos pro when that came out but by then I had also discovered Blitz Basic 2 which was miles ahead of amos. Again coded a few bits and had fun. Learn some C and messed around with Amiga E for a bit. Then the Amiga started to die out and I got a 486 PC, could find anything to code in I liked for a few years then came across DIV game studio, made some cool little games with it before finding BlitzBasic for the PC, having used the old one on amiga I bought it right away and haven't looked back, got Blitz3d and Blitzmax when they came out. I also have Visual C++.Net 2003 which I have coded a few things in while learning C/C++.

I also coded in 6502 asm.(think it was) when I was at school on BBC Model-B's, wrote a few wierd things in it and also coded a program that I could send to any computer on the network and the moment anyone pressed a key on the keyboard it took control making all the letters drop to the bottom and pile up as solid squares, kind of a virus of sorts I suppose but was great for practical jokes on others 

[Optimus]

That's a very nice thread. And theoritically I have yet to complete the rest of the story in the thread "memories".

Such a unique feeling it is to discover the demoscene out of nothing, alone, without having anyone else near your place knowing the shit to inform you about it and get you amazed by showing demos to you. I have told the story several times. It's quite simplistic, though bring me up memories of discovering something alone and wondering what this treasure is, having noone that knows so I can ask.

It was inside 1998. I still try to remember the date. At first I thought it was 1997 but now I am sure it was 1998. I was giving exams to pass to the university for the second time. At the spring of 1998 I have discovered a CD from a greek commercial magazine that was released at 1995 and featured scene demos from the era 91-93 (I always find funny this occasion with the years. It's like the 32bit GUI that is a wraper of a 16bit OS made for an 8bit CPU... etc joke ). It was better though because I had a slow 486 at the time. I wouldn't like to try to run the demos of 1998 or even 1996 in that machine or else I would have possibly been dissapointed. Now I had the oldschool ones with smooth scrolling and great mod chips =). I was amazed! Also, in another magazine a reader said "..like Second Reality at Assembly Parties 9X which neither M$ nor Intel can bring us no matter the Sextiums and Winblows..", haha funny! An angry reader's letter about the way PCs have gone with hardware requirements. Anyways, I also pitty the reply of the magazine that "these are not exactly realtime, etc.. they are prerendered animations, if they were realtime you would be able to control the spaceship" ugh ;P. Who cares! I bless that reader because he got my attention. Is there a software that can do miracles on my slow PC and ridicule today's software? How come I hadn't seen it? (I was fanatic against requirements and also adored optimized software even if I knew shit about programming at times, so SR was something I HAD TO SEE!!!). And of course that magazine CD also featured SR which although crashed at parts in my Cyrix 486 ;PPP

But I had seen other demos at the moment before I could fully see SR in a not buggy PC. I still can't wipe the memories that bring me tears, the music hum of Balmania or in the vector part of Cronologia, watching them all alone as there was no other person that knew what this mysterious demoscene was (I had no internet connection at all). A treasure I had discovered alone. Watching those demos and reading the nfo files in my room.

Later, I passed in the university and did it to the internet rooms. I searched for demo, "Demo of Quake 2 what?" Ugh!!! Then I knew I should search for demoscene to find what I need. I went into scene.org before I also found www.hornet.org. In scene.org I went into all assembly parties and downloaded Verses, Stars and some 4k intros. 4K?!?! Demos in 4k??? WTF!!! I really wanted to get back to home soon and load those stuff, copy them from my disketes to my 486 and see. Yep, a pack full of 10 disketes and bring back stuff from the internet.

At the same time I wanted to start doing demoeffects in quickbasic. I had quickbasic 1.1 and not 4.5. The dream of my life was to make EXEs. By searching for a compiler I found the quickbasic community sites exactly at the same time. Among the demoscene I also found the quickbasic scene at the times. And since I knew what demo meaned in terms of scene, I had seen in quickbasic archives the button "Demos". What?! Demos in quickbasic?!?! At the same time I download wolfenstein and fires in quickbasic to watch at home. I was astonished by miracles from two scenes at the same time!

Later I had seen C64 is doing demos and was again "WHAT?". I luv those miracles, the reason I am in the scene sometimes. How come? And CPC? Since CPC is my childhood computer I really wanted to know if it has also demos today. I remember at 1992 our graphician Rex from the Dirty Minds was writting in an old computer magazine about CPC demos that make miracles, displays more colors than the theoritical, smooth scrolling, 3d, etc. I was a bit curious back then but I was too small and had no connection to anyone knowing teh shit. I even didn't dared to phone to the magazine and ask Rex. So I never was into the scene in such an early age. Only after 1998. Anyways to go back to the story, that was the time I met Antitec (it was in 1999 actually where my real scene carreer had started) and joined Dirty Minds.

I could go on and on with other things, how the 2nd era of the greek demoscene had started again, how did I joined The Lab which split later and I went to Nasty Bugs and now back to Mindlapse which is the succesor of The Lab. But i'LL stop here for the moment because the topic is how I've started not how I've continued 

[Jim]

My friend got a ZX81 and the school got a ZX Spectrum.  At the time I thought they were amazing - and truly they were.  Our family had no money and when my mum left my dad, he lost all his benefits while everything was getting sorted out.  When it finally got fixed, my dad got a backdated benefit cheque and spent it on a ZX Spectrum, a game (Abacus' Sentinel) and a book of type-in programs.  One of the great things my parents ever did for me.  So that's where I got started programming, couldn't afford any games so spent the time typing in programs out of magazines and fiddling around with the programs on the Horizon tape.
Started writing my own little programs and used to compile the local orienteering club event results.  I used to pop in to the adult library when I was 12 and take out all the assembly language programming books, and got into a bit of that.

Eventually, I'd pretty much programmed the speccy into the ground, the letters rubbed off the keys.  My brilliant granny then spent some of the money she made selling her house on getting me an Amiga 500.  We still had no money, so I programmed that in Amiga Basic, then a bit of C and Modula-2.  I got seriously into the PD scene then, and bought hundreds of demo disks from NBS PD in the Isle of Wight.  (Anyone know where they went?)  I actually compiled a demo disk full of bits and they had it in their catalogue

By now, it was pretty obvious what I was going to do on leaving school, so I went to the University of Sheffield and did a 3yr Software Engineering degree.  I was terrified on the first day to find out that everyone there had already done an O or A Level in computer science, except me!  But in the end it was the maths that I had done that was much more important, and, while I don't know how much I learned about programming on the course, I really learned how good code should be written and how software engineering as a discipline is supposed to work.  I graduated in 1993 with a 2:1

The very same week I graduated, my friend who was working in the games industry was planning to go to Australia.  He'd been planning for months but hadn't told his boss.  We were sitting in the pub one day, and off the cuff I said "I could do your job".  That rang a bell for my mate, and next day he told his boss he was going to Oz, but not to panic, he had someone who could take over!  So the Wednesday after I graduated, I had a job writing computer games!!

I had no idea what I was doing.  The Amiga is a complex beast to write fast games for - lots of custom hardware.  The code was all in 68000 assembler, which I didn't know, and C which I had a slim grasp of.  But I got there, and released 2 games with Ocean - International Open Golf Championship, and Ryder Cup Golf.

That job went pear-shaped after that, and I got a new job at a company called Maelstrom.  That lasted about 18 months or so, and we released Star Lord with Microprose and Lords of Midnight III: The Citadel with Domark/Eidos.  That was another chaotic project because it was all in 386 assembler, which I didn't know!

Maelstrom sold everything to Philips in 1995, and I worked with Curved Logic for 3 years, doing some PC/DirectX and some N64 coding.  We never released anything, but this is where the whole 3D thing finally happened for me - the penny dropped.  Philips sold Curved Logic and all their games stuff to Infogrames in 1998.  I quit.

Amazingly, the whole team was re-hired about 3 months later by a company called Darkblack to do a skateboarding game.  We did MTV Sports:Skateboarding Featuring Andy MacDonald.  We released PC, Dreamcast and Playstation versions.  After 2 years, that went tits-up too.

I'd had enough of the games industry by then, so I took a job in Oz with my mate from university again!  I came over for a 6 month contract, and I've been here 5 1/2 years now!  I'm doing all manner of embedded programming for video slot machines, alongside some emulation stuff, some 3D and a video signage product that I'm actually pretty proud of.

I've been really lucky to get all my education on the job, but I can't say it hasn't been stressful at times.  And I really have to thank my family for helping - my dad for getting me the speccy, my gran for the amiga, and all the others that helped me pay for all the beer at university!

Jim

[taj]

Like you Jim,I started out on a speccie.  Then I moved onto CPC-464 and just wrote graphics. Did my first fractal planet in 1984. Went to college, studied computing but wasted all my time doing "demos" .I was hooked on graphics. Mandelbrot set, raytracer, IFS, superquadrics etc. You name it I'd done it by end of my 4th year. The lecturers learned I was interested in other stuff and let me do my own thing, even encouraging me and giving me hints in their spare time. Good guys.

Then I did a job writing compiler loader and linker for a supercomputer for head of CS department but also then got a job doing scientific visualisation on the parallel supercomputers at Uni. I did photon tracing, volumetric rendering, radisoity, flocking simulation, object morphing, a whole bunch of great stuff - loved it! Published some papers got in with the in-crowd and then...went after money and dropped programming :-(. Idiot!

Spent 4 years at Silicon Graphics. Did all the usual OpenGL, VRML, Performer, Inventor all that stuff. Spent a lot of time, including weekends, in the reality center in Reading. Then moved on and began a software team to implement opengl and directx drivers and hardware. We finished DX whatever and Opengl 1.2 but never sold it - it was at the time NVidia really took off. We simply couldnt match their performance. Though, we had programmable shaders up and running in ...1995 :-) Infact, I can honestly say our work at PixelFusion was fundamental in pushing shaders mainstream from their early days on PixelPlanes supercomputers down to PCs.  Still we failed though from a business point of view so I left graphics. The company is still going and they offered me a job :-) but they work in a different field now so...maybe not.

http://www.siggraph.org/s98/exhibition/detail_110532.html that was me on the demo floor :-)

Last year I finally discovered the scene. I rediscovered my joy of graphics and relearnt my coding (it had been like 8 years since I coded a bit like you Clyde).3 months later I launched a 1k on Pouet and was immediately hired by a demogroup. I spent 1 year with them and won a major intro compo then left...too complicated to explain. So now I'm here having much more fun.

[combatking0]

I started programming many years ago on a variety of old BASIC machines.

Then I got a PS2, and started some YABASIC, and found what was then known as the YABASIC forums.

Then EZBoard shafted us all, and I ended up here somehow.

[Clyde]

I know that you do some neat stuff in Java\Html. But do you program in any other languages, like Blitz or even the much better Freebasic or even C++/ASM?

It would be cool to see some stuff from you dude
Also you know where to ask for help if ever you needed it.

Cheers and all the best,
Clyde.

[slinks]

I first gained an interest when I was about 7-8 when I first saw net yaroze games (homebrew for the ps1). I played the games obsessivly, and begged my parents for a yaroze playstation. Naturally, they declined, saying it was too expencive and I wouldn't have the brains to use it (fair comment), but they might get it when I'm older and smart enough. Not to be put off, I designed a game, including character/enemy designs and different areas, and a bunch of weaponry as well. After finishing it, I stashed the plans so I could find them when I became old enough, and hopefully make this game. As it happens, I still haven't run into the files, and I'm too lazy to go through all my old stuff (I had this obsession with keeping ALL of my old drawings so I didn't lose them).

Years passed.

Then I got a PS2, and started some YABASIC, and found what was then known as the YABASIC forums.

Then EZBoard shafted us all, and I ended up here somehow.

End story

[combatking0]

Oh yes. The JavaScript side of things. That all started shortly after I joined the YABASIC forums.

HTML was part of my degree course, and it was mainly all self tought.

I have written loads of games. There's another forum I'm a part of who have requested these be written with a PHP driven top score table. Damn, I've got to get my head together.

I'll roll out the free versions (stand alone with no score tables) here soon.

As for the Yabasic stuff, I have created a few games of my own. Once I get my site up and running properly, I'll host all the YABASIC contributions from the old forum.