Inteview with Slummy

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INTERVIEW WITH SLUMMY/SPACEBALLS


By Zerox/Gods


INTRODUCTION

As a short introduction, please tell the readers a few words about
yourself, your function and what you want to achieve in the scene?

I was born in 1978, and my real name is Remi Johan Pedersen. At the moment 
I'm the only active coder in Spaceballs, and I've also been organizing the 
group since the summer of 1997.

When did you enter the scene and how did you first get attracted to it?

When I got my first c64 in 1989 it didn't take long before I got hold of 
some demos, but eventhough they were interesting, I never got the idea to 
try to make some on my own. When I got my a500 early in '92 I had already 
seen lots of amigademos on my friends machines (the ones I remember the 
most are some of Kefrens megademos and the Budbrain demos ofcourse). The 
first 3 demos i copied after i got the a500 was Silents's "Global Trash", 
Razor1911's "Voyage" and Spaceballs' "Spasmolytic".
As I'm from Halden, the same town as most of the founding members of 
Spaceballs, I quickly got a lot of info about the scene, and when I 
started to code assembler early '93 I got lots of help&hints from Major 
Asshole and Lone Starr. My first scenegroup was Cadaver which I joined as 
a coder early in '94, and I stayed there (doing nothing) untill I joined 
Spaceballs in march 1995, while I was was working together with Major 
Asshole on "The Last Finger" which got second in the 64k-compo at that 
years The Gathering.

GROUPS

What do you think are the good and bad sides of your group?

As I'm the organizer I'm ofcourse satisfied with almost everything about 
our group. Well, seriously I think it's really nice that the general 
"mood" of the group is very relaxed and that noone is expected to do 
anything if they don't feel like it. We're one big happy family where 
everyone are friends, and I feel we can have fun together in a 
"non-computer-based" way (which means that we can booze together as well 
as do demos...).

The only bad thing i see about the group is that most (all) of us live 
quite far from eachother, and therefore close cooperation is quite 
difficult (eventhough it's easier now than in the days when all contact 
was based on mailswapping).

As you're the organizer of Spaceballs, how important do you think it is
for a group to have a good organizing and real friendship between the
members? Is it important at all?

Friendship is not a must to make good productions, but it improves the 
cooperation between the different people involved in the development, and 
it also makes it a lot more fun to party during/after the 
developmentperiod. I probably wouldn't get involved in a larger 
demoproject with someone I couldn't stand, but other people might be more 
diplomatic about it...
What's your all-time favourite group? And why?

Hmmm, my 3 favourites would be Sanity, Virtual Dreams and Spaceballs 
(before the silly sods let me into the group ofcourse)...

Sanity because of their ability to produce pure coder-porn like "Elysium", 
"Optimum Fuckup", "World of Commodore" etc etc, (and ofcourse because of 
Chaos' ultimate arrogance).

Virtual Dreams for some of the same reasons: coding-skills and a 
tad of arrogance, mixed together with some good graphic- & music-talents 
and the fact that most of their prods scored very high on the 
oh-so-important "in your face"-scale.

Spaceballs simply because their productions were so different from most of 
the other stuff released in the period 92-94.

What's the next release we'll see from Spaceballs AFTER the Kindergarden
and TRSAC parties?

Hehehehe, that's way too far into the future for us to plan. Probably 
some crap made in 2 days, just to win some money somewhere...

CODING

You've released quite some releases in the past. What's your favourite
own-made production?

The ones I enjoy the most are not necessarily the ones with the best 
code or design, but rather prods like Smurph (the first time I won a 
democompo), Art by coincidence (the first time I made something with 
atleast some acceptable design) and Sparklingbluearcticlight (coded during 
my brilliant holiday in Finland 1999). I guess the "winner" here must be 
Supermonster because I still remember how hard I worked on it (the week it 
was developed), because of some of the design-parts which I'm still 
satisfied with, and because of the reactions it got from a lot of people 
(eventhough A LOT of people disliked it too...).

Tell us about your favorite production made by others?

One of my all-time favourites is Closer from CNCD. The effects were
cutting edge when it was released (and effects haven't evolved much further
since 1995, so a lot of them are still 'copied' today), the graphics were
great and the music by Groo is one of the best demotunes ever.

Is there an effect you've seen from other coders which you know you would
never manage to make?

Some of the productions by Chaupple/Contraz have incredibly weird bugs I'd
never be able to copy.

What's the most impressive routine you've ever seen? And what's your
favourite coder?

Chaos/Sanity is without doubt the best democoder ever on amiga (and he
made sure that everyone else were told about it too). I guess that the most
impressive effect I've seen must have been one of his, but I can't single
out one in particular.

Do you think it's ok to include animations in demos/intros?

Definitely. As long as it looks cool I don't care what it is.

What do you think about nowadays demos? And what do think about the 3d
trend?

The quality of the scenereleases is as it's always been. A lot of the 
stuff that's released is uninteresting & badly designed crap, while some 
prods are really nice. The biggest difference between todays releases and 
the ones we got 5-10 years ago is that the total amount is much lower, so 
naturally there's a lot fewer quality-releases. All in all I think the 
percentage of good releases is about the same as it's always been.
When it comes to the so-called "3d trend" it's something that's lasted 
since the early nineties, and I can't see that much has changed. Most 
groups release boring stuff that's been done thousands of times before. 
Some groups with skilled coders release boring stuff that's been done 
thousands of times before, only this time it runs a bit faster. And 
finally, a small minority manages to do something that's a bit different, 
or atleast such a great speed- / technicality-improvement that it's fun to 
watch...

How do you create a demo? Is there a special way you prefer to produce it?
Like first getting a module/gfx, then get the idea or opposite?

Sometimes I get the idea for a design-concept from something I see on 
tv or in a magazine and then just try to come up with effects that I think 
would fit the overall "feeling" I try to achieve. Other times everything 
just seems to happen, and then I don't even know when the development of 
the demo started. Most of the time when I start on a production I have 
plans for lots of effects (or rather how I imagine they should look, 
something that never works out in the end), and eventhough the real coding 
of the demo only takes a couple of days, I might have been thinking about 
the parts for several months without writing anything down or starting on 
the code.

My preferred way of making a demo would be to code all the effects first 
in a way that'd make it easy to link & design them, then cooperate 
closely with the musicians and graphicians to get everything perfect.
This has never happened.
With the demo PowerGod, you managed to win the Gathering party for the
third time in a row. What do you like the most about that production?

The wonderfull music from Teo&Teis together with the awesome graphics 
from Atom is what I really like about the demo. When it comes to the 
coding I'm quite satisfied with the first two parts, especially the green 
3-layered zoomer. The rest of the parts are more or less variations of 
stuff I've done before, combined with a rather boring design. There are 
a couple of smart tricks here & there, but almost nothing you'd notice 
if you didn't try to code it yourself.

At the Assembly party you released the 4k intro King Of Fuck, together
with your "rival" group Ephidrena. Who came up with the idea
for the coopeartion? Please tell the readers about the various effects
and the making of this intro.

I travelled together with Ephidrena to MekkaSymposium 2001 and on the 
ferry from Sweden to Germany I came up with the idea of a 4k-cooperation
where Loaderror would make the music using his soundsystem and I would code
the effects. Originally we planned to just throw something together at
Mekka, but as Loaderror was working his ass of with their demo and I was
rolling around in garbage most of the time, the project was postponed.
After that nothing happened untill Loaderror and I had some beers together
in Oslo in July and decided that it'd be fun to release it at Assembly and
kick some pc-ass in the combined compo. Loaderror started on the music, and
one weeks before assembly I received the finished music and discovered that
I didn't have a clue about what kind of effects to put in the intro.
"Normal" work combined with a total lack of inspiration made progress slow
during the next days, but finally I had a z-buffered sphere-mapper and a
sizeoptimized version of my radialblur-routine. Two days before the
deadline I started to link everything together and also included a rotzoom
and a small fractalgenerator. These four routines were then combined in all
possible ways for the different parts. For a while it seemed like I wasn't
going to get it finished in time, but thanks to flexible organizers (and
drunk sceners like Leia, Arcane and Loaderror who phoned me up from Finland
in the middle of the night shouting gibberish) everything worked out in the
end.

THE SCENE

Do you remember the first demo you saw and mag you read?

I can't remember the first demo I ever saw, but the first mag I read on 
amiga was probably one of the later issues of Stolen Data.

What do you think are the good and bad sides of the scene?

Some of the good sides is that you can have fun, meet lots of nice 
people, and maybe even earn some money on your hobby. I can't think of any 
bad things, well maybe the fact that some of the people you meet are total 
bores, but that's the same almost anywhere...

Do you have any special scene memory you want to share with the readers?

Odyssey '95 was a nice experience eventhough very few people showed up
and the organizer Walker/Noctural still has debts from it. Especially the
wild competition where Dominei/Inf (who later also joined Spaceballs) and I
got the 2nd prize (damn Contraz and their "0ksemannen"!!!!) with our
sensual stripshow was an interesting experience.

Well, it's time to find out what's your taste. What's your favorite:


SLOGAN        : Grotesticle's "Vi er hyggelige, pene og lette å holde rene"
SLIDESHOW     : "Revelations" by Rank/Cryptoburners
INTRO         : "Darkroom" by Stellar
DEMO          : "Closer" by CNCD
MUSICDISK     : "Mirror" by Andromeda (it had everything except good music...)
FRIENDLY TEAM : Zymosis Boozing Society
MAG           : RAW
EDITOR        : Lord Helmet/Spaceballs

And what do you think about the latest Amiga plans?

I don't know anything about them at all.

Do you picture yourself in the scene many many years from now?

I think I might continue to visit sceneparties to meet old friends and
have some fun from time to time even after I quit making demos.

MAGS

What do you think about nowadays mags? Do you miss something?

Well, first of all there's too few of them and thus you have to wait for
ages between each time someone release a new issue of any of the good mags.
Good interviews and other scenerelated articles is also something I miss in
a lot of the mags today.


REAL LIFE

What's your occupation?

I'm a student, currently in my fourth year of studying to become a Civil
Engineer in technical cybernetics.

Thanks for spending alot of your time here answering these questions. Good
luck with future plans... Now you can write whatever you would like, like
greetings etc.

Well, hupp&hopp to everyone I know, and everyone out there should visit
Kindergarden (9-11 October)!!

(That's too late now thanks to yet another D.I.S.C. delay. We have to keep
our traditions... ;) Ed.).