Inteview with Buddha
found in | Type | Author | Year |
Diskmagazine interviews | D-Tect Advance - Agent - Arrakis - ... | z11/91 |
Buddha/Spreadpoint Interview Done by: McDeal/D-TECT ?: Hi Buddha! Please let us start the interview with a little introduction of yourself. !: Ok, let's start with the boring part. I'm a 20 year old student living down here in Switzerland. Perhaps you know my face already, don't you (advertisement feature)? As you might have guessed, my style of music is jazz and that's the reason I asked the musician to write some funky music for Cube-o-matic. And I really like the result although most of the guys which saw the demo asked me if I could use another tune for it... Different folks, different tastes! ?: What's the story behind your pseudonym >Buddha How did you find it? !: I chose that name long time ago on the good old C64 (where I used to make trainers for all sort of games. Imagine: My weakness in playing games really was the main reason I started to learn programming from scratch! Wouldn't guess that, would you?). Besides that, Buddha's under- standing of coexistence between man- kind and the environment seems very reasonable to me... And he's this fat, self-comfortable and cheeky- looking guy sitting on my computer monitor! BTW: What's the story behind McDeal? I've to admit that I don't like it since it contains two things I don't like: 'Mc' which reminds me of McDonald's and 'Deal' which implies business. I'm not very fond of both of these... ?: To clear up the general things: Please describe your computer equipment. !: I own an A2500 with A2630, a GVP SCSI controller, a Fujitsu 500Mb harddisk, a NEC 3D and a display en- hancer. I'm planning to upgrade to an A3000 soon. ?: I see. You have a turbo card. So please tell me which comment does Cube-O-Matic give on your system concerning the CPU speed! !: Cube-o-matic reports 'Ah Yeah! This machine has approximately the same speed as mine... The demo will squeeze the best out of it and look great!'. ?: Don't you think that the effect in Cube-O-Matic is a little bit too time consuming for a normal MC68000? Don't misunderstand me: I don't think the routine is slow! I just want to ask you if one aim of Cube- O-Matic perhaps was to start a new development concerning Amiga demos. Did you want to encourage people to make effects which are mainly de- signed for MC68020s and '030s? !: Definitely. As a matter of fact half of the time I spent on Cube-o-Matic was to make it run on a stock 512k A500 which isn't that fascinating a machine. But the main aim was to make it look as gourgeous as pos- sible on a well-equipped Amiga with at least a 68020. ?: Could you imagine to release a demo in near future which only runs on a turbo Amiga? Or is it too early at the moment? !: I'd like to. But even before I'll release a demo which runs on a 68030 Amiga only, I'll perhaps write demos which only work with 1Mb+ and co- operates with the multitasking en- vironment. I made a special version of Cube-o-matic which perfectly mul- titasks although I didn't put all these logo'n'scrollers in it. Just the essential stuff. ?: Talking about Cube-O-Matic: What about Sphere-O-Matic? Do you already work on it? !: Thinking about it: Yes! Writing it: No! And I doubt I'll really program Sphere-o-matic this or the next year... As I mentioned, learning to use the AmigaOS (especially 2.0) to its extent is the thing I'm doing right now. BUT I'll always be inter- ested in clever and extraordinary algorithms! ?: Tell me your favourite demos of the last few months. Was there in your opinion anything remarkable? !: All those demos with 3D-worlds which makes them some sort of virtual reality. But generally the program- ming and/or user-friendlyness is one major pain of ALL those demos I saw during the last few YEARS! Each demo should be one FILE (so I may put it on my harddisk if I like it), MUST NOT trash memory and must have a safe exit function! And it should run on any Amiga under any OS ver- sion of course... ?: Do you think it's still fun to code demos on the Amiga? Wasn't it much more exciting at the early beginning as large parts of the hardware were not discovered? How do you motivate yourself to make a new effect? !: I've never been interested in those hardware quirks and hacks which may result in some special effect if you run them on the right Amiga con- sidering the moon-phase or stuff like that. From the beginning I used CBM's Reference Manuals as a guide what to do and what to avoid... The longer the more, if you want to pro- duce stunning effects, you have to use lots of programming tricks and easy (and approximately correct) so- lutions to impossible problems (as Cube-o-matic does). ?: When and where did you have the idea to Cube-O-Matic? Was it when you saw Slayer's stencil vectors for the first time? !: No. The effect of texture mapping always fascinated me and still does. It's the only way to make computer graphics look less artificial. The base idea was born at the beginning of this year when Ucom visited us here in Switzerland. But Stencil vectors certainly enforced me to go even further... ?: What was the craziest routine you've ever written? !: I'd say the outer-loop of Cube-o- matic: It's written in a special Cube-o-matic language which consists of huge macros... And I had a lot of copy'n'paste'n'modify to do. Or perhaps the most important part of Cube-o-matic which looks like this: moveq #0,d6 add.w a6,d5 addx.w d6,d5 swap d5 move.l a6,d6 swap d6 add.w d6,d5 move.w d5,d6 swap d5 move.b d5,d6 move.b (0,a0,d6.w),d6 Crazy, isn't it? ?: What's your opinion about computer languages like 'C' and 'Pascal'? Do you program in one of them or are you 'assembler only'? !: Forget Pascal. 'C' is great! Every- one should learn 'C' sooner or la- ter... The sooner the better. A pro- grammer which religiously only 'speaks' one language is oneeyed. (And sometimes it seems to me that in the Amiga scene, the one-eyed man can be king of the blind...). That's the same story as with hardware hackers and OS-believers... ?: Amiga Industries and Spreadpoint are in cooperation since a few weeks now. What's your opinion about this cooperation? Tell me the reason why your group has chosen AI as their partners? !: That's group policy. None of my business I mean... The idea came up at the Kickin'Ass party. AI is some kind of a legendary group as Spread- point is and therefore it seemed reasonable to join forces. ?: It was very silent around Spread- point during the last few months but since the cooperation with AI there seems to be a new 'wind' in the group 'cause many members became active again. Is this true? !: Most of the Spreadpoint members are not interested in that swapping and glory stuff the scene now consists and therefore didn't release very much. I've chosen Spreadpoint as a group where friendship and exchange of opinions and information were the major goals. ?: Can you tell me something about Amiga Industries & Spreadpoint's fu- ture projects? !: I really don't know about this... If someone in AI & SP wants to make a come-back in the illegal part of the scene, I'll be out. Does not in- terest me at all. If anybody claims to be the boss of Spreadpoint, don't believe it! There never was, is or will be a leader of SP. (If one day the majority of SP doesn't agree any more, I'm gone). ?: Let's talk about the MasterSeka. Did you get any copyright problems with it? !: No. I got an announcement from UGA which said that they would like to distribute MasterSeka. Got lots of fan post though! Thanks and sorry that I haven't replied most of it. ?: I think you are always calling your- self 'legal'. So what were the reasons for you the make (and re- lease!) the MasterSeka? !: I HAVE done some cracks and trainers for MY OWN USE and when I started to improve the Seka assembler I thought it might be of interest to one or the other programmer and therefore I released it... ?: Why didn't you make an update again? Don't you use it anymore? Did you change to another assembler system (As you are having a turbo card and the Masterseka can't assemble the new instructions)? !: After two years of improving Master- Seka more and more one gets tired of it. I had to start something new if I didn't want to lose my mind. Cube- o-matic was completely written using the MasterSeka assembler but cur- rently I am using PuzzleFactory's great Macro68 which everyone should buy and support! ?: What's your opinion about the fol- lowing assemblers? Give some com- ments on AsmOne, (Master-) Devpac, OMA, ArgAsm, Macro68. !: AsmOne: I think it's immoral to sell any pirated program! Not OS compa- tible. Didn't get MasterDevpac. But you would have to throw out all the slow and buggy original routines to make it a real assembler (same for AsmOne). OMA: I'm interested in OMA 2.0 although I don't think I'll like it... ArgAsm: Definitely the fastest assembler! Sadly that's the only good thing you can say about ArgAsm. Macro68: Still the best! ?: Have you already coded a 'professio- nal' program which was sold? If yes, do you think you were well-payed? !: As I knew I wouldn't get that much money, I spent as little time as possible to finish the program I sold... More projects are in work. ?: Let's talk about diskmags. Do you regulary read one or more diskmag? Which one is your favourite? (Tell us the truth!) !: Diskmags? I read them only oc- casionally... Not very much interes- ting stuff in there most of the time. ?: Is there any motto concerning your life? If yes, please tell me! (You can answer this question in German, too!) !: Phew! I'm changing it everytime I open a new Shell. Perhaps this one: 'Never appeal to a man's "better nature". He may not have one'. ?: The end of this interview is near. So this is your last chance to say something you want to! (greetinx, contact address, etc.) !: Don't go for business... Amiga gives you more for the money... The hard- ware is great (Thanks, Jay!) and the OS is the most efficient I've ever seen (Congratulations, Carl!) Gree- tings to those guys all around the globe who always have been good friends to me... ?: Ok, now comes the last question: How did you like the questions of this interview? Do you think we have the right view of your person after reading it? !: The questions were allright (at least they seemed O.K. to me). If you know more about me now is up to you... Cannot comment on that. ?: Thank you for answering all the questions (even under time pres- sure!) Hope we meet you again some day again! Bye! !: I'm pretty sure about that... Have a nice time! Bye!