Inteview with Metal Designer
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Diskmagazine AGA Chipset required - interviews | Darkage Avenger - Cheetah - Corrosion - ... | a6/98 |
In Focus:Metal Designer of Nah-Kolor Name and Surname: Antonello Mincone Age : 20 anni Business : Student of electrical engineering Codename : Metal Designer Gang : Nah-Kolor Function in the gang : Little girls' enticer, coder Crimes : Tenebra, Psyko Rifle, TheProphecy, SideFx, Hardcore, Unauthorized Lands. What you now read is the schedule of a wellknown gangster called Metal Designer, who made various crimes for the Scene. We have the proof of these crimes. Actually, his intros and his demos invaded the harddisks of every Scener; but we want to know more from and about him, so we did this thirty degrees questioning. So we visited the lately captured criminal in the local jail and asked him about all the scenish robberies, assault and batteries he did. Will we keep him in jail or will he be allowed to go and be a free man afterwards. You`ll see it! ;-) How did you start, Mr. Gangster... What is your scenish life? "I was in the first high school year, Nov91. In that issue of TGM (italian papermag) there was for the first time a Talent Scout (a rubric about new young talents), they talked about Dolphin, a group in Pescara (my town), authors of Jewels, an Amos Columns clone, published some months later by the new softwarehouse Lindasoft. I contacted the programmer, Francesco D'Angelo, and since that day he became my best friend; I've started to know how Miggy works from him, and I too started to code an Amos game: No More Colours, a Splash clone. Splash was a coin-op like Qix, where a paint-brush had to paint over a nude woman body, and to defend from moving bobbles, with blocks and various bonus, like shields and similar... it isn't my style, but everyone who watched it told me I've used Amos at 100%. It never went out simply because I needed a good module converter... In the meanwhile I met Marco Ricci, who needed an Assembler handbook (me and Francesco bought 2 just for interest). I got from him many software like Amos Pro and DevPac and I've started coding in Asm. I still coded a bit with my Amos game, while Marco, who was already able to programm (later on I knew he was able to code) on C64 started immediatly with Asm; when I needed the songs for NMC I asked Marco and he gave me the tel. number of a friend of him, Fabio, a sort of ex-student of Marco on C64. He told me that he knew many people beeing able to compose music, and he also showed me some beautiful pics linked with music (I knew later it was a slideshow), coded by Fabio (World of Manga/Comax, -Ed): I remember that when I called him I was a lot excited and he told me "Ciao, I'm Randy of Comax and I'm the eigth cracker in the WORLD" and I "Wow!". He gave me the telephone number of a certain Federico, that Fabio told me to call him just "Parsec", who composed the music for his new demo NaOs. I called Parsec, and discovered at once that he was a strange person; in two minutes he played me three modules and told twenty names in english... Marco started to show me some disks called Demos: the first ones were Odyssey, Desert Dreams and 9 Fingers. I was surprised especially about the disks named Spaceballs, so when I called Parsec I asked him also to do a Dance mod. The idea was to do 9 Fingers in AGA, the only problem was that we needed a good video recoder and a studio where to record everything, or better the starting base.. But we tried, and it was the occasion to contact also more strange people by phone, like Lry and Sirio. Between the many phonecalls, one day Parsec asked me if I wanted to do with him a demogroup (even if I still hadn't the right idea about a demogroup); he told me there weren't problems, and he asked us about our handles. Mine was easy: Metal Designer, I called myself so since Amos times, a real mental masturbation: language was limited, so there's need of hard ideas. Marco, that was called HitMan on C64, decided to rename to Hedgehog, because his surname is Ricci ("Hedge", -Ed), and also because Sonic was one of the myths. Francesco didn't care about the scene, but we all called him Fra at the sea, so it was nice to use the same name we used at the phone. Parsec immediatly wanted to do a great demo. In the meanwhile Full Moon, Love and Origin runned every day on our monitors, but also It Can't Be Done, coded by italians, some Ram Jam, my best group's name; but I thought we could be better, so I proposed "It Can't Be Done" too as name for the demo. Hedgehog started to code some effects, he wrote at least 30 times the rotation routine, Fra was a god in creating plasmas, and he started to have interest in 3d, even if he was always a nice gfxman. I had right ideas for creating effects like fire and I had some knowledge in math that Hedgehog hadn't, and I was able to try the effects before in Amos (I was able to write also 5 x day). The first demos with texture were out, followed immediatly by steps of env, Psychedelic was a monster that only the fastmem of Fra allowed us to watch. I was the only one to have a modem, but I wasn't able to find docs. While I was under the shower, a sunday of April 95, I had the idea for the texture mapping, finished by Hedgehog. At the beginning the demo should be for the Sing Sing (the first try of a demoparty in Italy -Ed), but we didn't finished it in time, also because the only routines I was able to write in ASM 100% were scrolltext, copper effects, plasma, and few others... Time later our demo, that Parsec called in the private area of QBism (a wellknown italian bbs -Ed) "Tenebra", was finished; my first travel outside Italy was in Holland, at Somewhere In Holland. I remember that there a guy called Facet passed me a joint and told me to pass it to a certain I-GO, a very tall guy that was speaking with Macno, a friend of Parsec that at the beginning I felt very unfriendly. My real myths there, were the swappers of T.F.A. that gave me and to few others the version 1,26 of the Asm-one. During SIH, Parsec told Macno that I wasn't able to code, but only to program.. I was very angry with him, and I was about to accept Acbs's proposal, who phoned me when I was back in Italy, asking me to join Ram Jam. The rest is a story that everyone knows; the Monna Partys, Smau meetings, meetings in Pescara, everything that my friends dreamed closed at home :DD ZZZzzz...Eh?! Ah, yes... Ok, I see that our Metal speaks a lot, you`ll feel a lot more easy after finishing this interview. "Which crime, did you like most? "It's hard to say, every production gave me a particular enjoyment, in every particular period of my life, also the names are not random, expecially for SideFX." But how do you think about the Amigascene after your crimes, eh? "It's the same of two years ago, a very funny place where I life some hours of the day." And the italian scene, how does it feel? "The same like two years ago, it's colourless. Or better, worse, without The Charts and Macno." Don't try to send excuses to the others! At the end you'll confess everything! "There were FOUR fundamental teachers about informatic in my life: my father, Fra, Hedgehog and Scout. The most important thing that this one told me until now is: I told him to thank for having explained me a thing) "Thanks, and sorry if I'm a lamer". He answered me: "You'll continue to be a lamer until you'll believe to be so". Elite and Lamers don't exist really, it's only folklore :) And folklore is a tradition, but to be honest, no one is elite and no one is a lamer." So we can be peaceful, even if we wont keep down the guard. Tell us, what do you think about the other gangsters? "All very sympathic." What are you doing, are you kidding? Who's the most dangerous, who's the bastard among them? "TheDarkCoder/Morbid Vision" has for sure the most solid bases, being an university researcher. There aren't any non-sympathic coders, who try to make me laugh :D" Ok, ok, we don't believe you... but anyway, let's continue. Is the Amiga dead? Or is there still a hope for her? (our girlfriend) "I can't only talk about Motorola 680x0, because I know only them, and the situation isn't green. For the rest, until we'll not see anymore the quantity of software of 7-8 years ago, we can say everything and the opposite." Do you think that PPC can extend the life of the Amiga? "Do you call Amiga a computer with PPC, gfx board, and various patch to fix bugs? If they would have evolved Copper (and so Chunkycopper) maybe I would too call it so..." There's someone in the Scene that you would throw down from a bridge? And who would you save? "From the bridge I would throw myself in the moments of existencial crisis :DDD. I'll gladly save Rio's ass. :DDD" Good, good... I would say that there are all the elements to keep you in jail and throw away the key to open the door. Do you have something to say, before we'll kick you away forever? "Well... a kiss to everyone in #orgia, I'd like to remember Rio that his pants are still between the ones of Susanna and Surfing. Then... still to Rio: I don't know if I'll go to Assembly, due to money, but if you find another place (nearest) full of small girls let me know. A big thank to God that accepted me during a very "pagan" lent, and a "hi" to all my neocatecumenal commmunity, in particular to my "sister" :D Daniela, who is still a the 16 years old girl with the biggest boobs I know, and the girl with the highest power to let me become angry." For the moment this is all, also today we have locked up another Scene gangster.casalengo@chivasso.alpcom.it (Translated by Mod3m & Ghandy)