Eclipse interviews Maverick/Serenity
Eclipse - Who are you and the rest of your group ?
Maverick - I'm Paul Furber aka maverick. The other guys are Viper - the founder, Caz and Scythe
both of whom are studying at Potch University still (I think).
Eclipse - How did your group get its name ?
Maverick - Viper chose it from a CD cover - plus it fits in with the laid back sort of attitude
we all have :)
Eclipse - When and how did you start coding ?
Maverick - Woah - probably early high school around 1980-81. (Yes I'm getting on a bit). The school
got in some Acorn Atoms (forerunner of the BBC Micro). Cool machines - 8k RAM, 8k ROM -
and a blazing 1Mhz 6502A processor. The programming manual had an assembler course so I
suppose that was where I started. I can actually still remember some of the opcodes.
There was no actual assembler so I used to POKE hex bytes into memory - hehe. On the
PC side, I've had one since 1988 and I picked up Mastering Turbo Assembler from a CNA
and started with that. It wasn't really demo stuff, more like Tetris and plasmas and
little Fractint clones. I got interested in the demo side of programming when I saw
Second Reality at the 1994 Computer Faire.
Eclipse - What hardware/software do you use for coding ?
Maverick - Quite a variety. I have a vanilla P-133 and an old 486-50 (still cool for old demos).
Also a nice high-end box for Linux with a 3DFx card in. Sound side I have a Gus Max
1Mb and and AWE-64 Gold.Software: I've used TASM for years and also Watcom C 10.0
which I bought a while ago. I was raised on Borland/Turbo C though and recently learnt
DJGPP (the DOS version of gcc for Unix) which is very powerful. On the linux side it's
gcc obviously and NASM which works with DJGPP too. My Pascal is rusty :)
Eclipse - Are you and your group entering Optimise 98 ?
Maverick - Yeah - as many categories as we can :)
Eclipse - What in the SA demoscene do you want to see improved ?
Maverick - Just one thing - for people to contribute without worrying what others will think.
EVERYONE started somewhere - no-one was born with the ability to program/track/draw -
it's all practice and experience. Who cares if overseas demos are better? In a way
that's cool - why they all agonize over where the scene is going, we can catch up :)
In a way I like John Carmack's philosophy. He posted recently in a .plan update that
the pleasure he derived from programming was an ongoing thing - he remembers all the
milestones in his career from discovering the smooth scrolling that made Captain Keen
possible right up to the radiosity engine for Quake 2.
Eclipse - you mean "Radiosity Approximation", yeah I wish I could even do that ;) What is your
current favorite demo or music ?
Maverick - Music would have to be Elemental's remix of Panic.s3m. It roqs. Demo - hmmmmmm -
Inside by CNCD. It just has STYLE! All-time favourite music is Jogeir Littledal's
Guitar Slinger - a 4-channel MOD.
Eclipse - What are some of your best productions with Serenity ?
Maverick - Erm - none I would rate as being the BEST. Viper and I achieved a miracle with CHASE
when it worked on the day of Optimise 97. We only finished it just before we showed
it :) But the demo itself is OK - nothing too brilliant :) We've produced nice intros
before - although that was the rest of the group (I was too busy writing songs and
drawing pics at the time) and Caz and Scythe have written some really amazing stuff
on the game side. Personally I rate the fact that I wrote an Impulse Tracker player
for DOS/Win95 and got the same level of functionality in it a good year before Cubic,
Midas and Mikmod started supporting ITs. It had a few rough edges but it worked. It
taught me loads of things which I still use today.
Eclipse - What was your first computer ?
Maverick - It was an Oric-1. Rival to the Spectrum which quickly faded from the scene because it
had tape loading problems. I actually coded some 2d rotations on it once and I got
something like 1 frame every 10 seconds :) My first PC a 386-16 with 4 Mb of RAM and
an 85Mb hard disk which I bought way back in 1988. It cost R10 000 or something but
it still rocked for those days. Up until two months ago, my folks were still using it!
Eclipse - What was the first demo you watched ?
Maverick - I thought at first it was second reality but it was actually a little crack intro for
a pirated game on a *cough* friend's machine once. It had cool little smooth scrolling
and some plasma effects. I think it was done by The Firm or something. Digression: when
I first saw 2nd R I said to this chap standing next to me at the Faire that some of the
effects looked like .FLIs. He said that the rules disallowed flic files and that it was
all real-time calculations. Years later I was quite amused when somebody ripped the demo
to bits and discovered that some effects WERE .FLIs - the Praxis Hyperspace Blast being
one of them. The name of the guy standing next to me? Viper of Serenity :)
Eclipse - I always wondered how they did that Hyperspace blast! I'd very much like it if you could
send me that FLI so that I can put it up on my page! ;) Do you have any current projects
you'd like to mention ?
Maverick - I have too many. Right now it's the 64k game for the Web page forum compos and I'll draw a
pic for the art as well. Long term I would like - no change that - I NEED to write a Linux
tracker because I want to code demos for Linux in the future and I'm tired of jumping to
DOS just to use Impulse Tracker. Also learning a few more graphical effects and stuff.
Eclipse - Do you think the current trend in "non-vector" design is overrated ?
Maverick - "Good code isn't good design and good design doesn't need good code."...
Eclipse - Now where have I heard that before ? ;) Michael Abrash?? ..Thats a very true quote!
Maverick - ...So whether demos are vector-based or not, the design will still count for a lot. I'd
like to see some really good demos without vectors - just to see what people can dream up.
But yes - the whole trend is overrated. A simple, well scripted 3d system is still very
effective. I haven't yet seen a scene that beats Unreal's little vector world sequence
with the spaceships zooming around, and that's 4 or 5 years old!
Eclipse - Where do you think demo design is headed ?
Maverick - It's hard to predict. I would be sad to see accelerated 3d effects only - I think there are
loads of physical effects - like from physics or mathematics - which could be put into a demo
which no-one has thought of yet.
Eclipse - What are Serenity's plans for the future ?
Maverick - Getting people interested in the demo scene in SA is a big priority now. I've just started
freelancing for a 100% local games magazine so I'll be writing columns for the next year or
so on demos, plugging the SA Web site and generating interest and stuff. On the demo side I'd
like to write a big demo for Linux and see it win a few trophies :) Also I've been revising
some music theory to improve my tracking which is in the doldrums at the moment :(
Eclipse - Anyone out there you'd like to say hi to, thank or threaten ?
Maverick - Hi to all members of the SA demo scene, to Celestial who are working very hard on an
excellent game under difficult circumstances and to Serenity the group.Thanks to all those who
have made free software possible - the Linux developers, Richard Stallman of the Free Software
Foundation, Eric Raymond of the Open Source initiative and the guys who release free versions of
their tools and products for the rest of us to use! Threats to....naaah, they'll get theirs soon
enough :)
Eclipse - And how can you be contacted ?
Maverick - m@verick.co.za either directly or from the Contact links on
http://www.surf.to/demos/ Or phone
anytime (011) 882-3991 or (082) 882-3991
Eclipse - Thanks for your time!
Maverick - Sure.