³INTERVIEW CORNER
²----------------
¹
 Today: MR.BLUESKY of the DRIFTERS 

You  surely  have  heard  talkin'  of  The  DRIFTERS.  They are one of the less
productive team in France but surely not because of their lack of will...  They
have  one of the most intresting  coder in the french scene.  I don't introduce
him here because we're in the same team, but because I think that you should be
intrested  to know him as we (the DRIFTERS) know him.  Discover him now...  You
won't be sorry !!!
                                                 OUTLANDOS/DFT    

³ODA:²    Hi MR.BLUESKY ! What about a little interview for Top Secret DiskMag ?

³MBS:¹    Yeah ! Of course, this my favourite magazine (Hi Hungary!).

³ODA:²    Can you introduce yourself, first ?
³MBS:¹    Well,  nothing  really  interesting to say about that !  I'm coder in
        DRIFTERS.  I founded the crew about 3 years ago with some friends who
        are  no  longer  in  it.  I'm 24 and I live in Toulouse/FRANCE...  No
        more !

³ODA:²    What's your actual configuration ?

³MBS:¹    My actual config is a loosy config, but anyway, here it is: A2000b,
        A500, A1084, B/W Monitor, Epson printer, and some drives.

³ODA:²    How did you begin to code ?

³MBS:¹    It began some years ago on a C64 when I discovered that it wasn't only
        a  playing  machine.  A this moment, you know, there was no demo scene
        on  this  fantastic  machine,  but  only  cracks with sometimes a lame
        intro.   So, coding simple stuff like scrollers, was really fantastic!
        I did some little routines (scrollers, rasters...) during one year and
        then  I  left home for studies and let the C64 to my brother.  After a
        while  I  bought  an A500.  I had no books and games temptation was so
        strong  that  I didn't start coding immediately.  A few time later (in
        1988),  I  got  bored  with  games, so I bought some books and started
        coding.  Wake up!  I'm finished!

³ODA:²    Umpf... Oh, thanks ! How a beginner coder should improve his skill ? 
        What do you suggest him ?

³MBS:¹    Am  I  able  to  answer  this  question?  I'm not sure but I'll try...
        First,  it  depends  on  what  a coder wanna do:  hardware programming
        (demos,  games)  or  system programming.  I say that because these two
        directions  are  radically  different:   for the first one (hardware),
        there's no need to know exactly how EXEC works, and hardware should be
        quickly  mastered; so, the main qualities of a coder are to be good in
        mathematics  and  to  have  good ideas; that's what they should try to
        improve.   For  system  programming,  the  most  important thing is to
        master EXEC and everything around, and this is not easy!  The only way
        to  success are, I think, the official Commodore docs:  a lot of books
        (in France) don't know what they talk about, and so, tell you silly or
        false  things,  and give you bad habits in programming.  While talking
        about bad habits, I would tell to beginners to not always want to copy
        their  elders!  Please, respect the way the Amiga works.  For example,
        it's  incredible  that nowadays most (demos) coders continue to ignore
        memory  management!   What  is  more stupid than a demo that tells you
        that  you  have  only 512Kb (and so the demo won't start), whereas you
        have  3  megs  in  your machine (Hi Equinox!  I win coz I've got 3.5MB
        (Zozo))?     This    is   really   a   pitty.    And   further   more,
        absolute-repacking  style  dos-demos  should  be finally left:  50% of
        them  crashed  on  'non-standard' memory config, I mean if you haven't
        512Kb  of  ChipMem  and at least 512Kb of FastMem; this is really lame
        because  more and more Amiga have now 1 Meg of ChipMem and no FastMem,
        and it will go on increasing with the new A500...

³ODA:²    What's your aim when you code a demo ?

³MBS:¹    Why only talking about demos ? It's always the same reason, whatever I
        code: fun ! How could it be something else ?!

³ODA:²    What do you think about French scene first, and about world scene in a
        second time ?

³MBS:¹    Well,  no  scoop!  There are a lot of lamers, and some cool guys, like
        in all other countries...  But there is something special, I think, in
        all  Latin  countries:   people  better talk than act; and this brings
        sometimes  a  lot of problems, like wars, crews breaking, and so on...
        You  know, Latin people are proud people, and there's nothing to do to
        change  that!   But,  French  people  can do quality productions, they
        proved  it.   The  main  difference between France an other countries,
        especially  Scandinavian countries, is the amount of productions; this
        comes  from  the  way  of life in South-Europa:  people spend a lot of
        time  out  of  their  homes!  So the Amiga has a smaller room in their
        life than in North-Europa, even if it's a passion.  So I come to world
        scene:   I think that Scandinavia supremacy is no longer to be proved,
        but  it's  not  a problem as long as everybody do what they like.  But
        the greatest thing that happened is the arrival of East-European crews
        on the scene.  I hope they will be more and more in the future.
        To  end,  I  agree  people  who  are  against some kinds of friendship
        because  I  think  they're becomming quite hilarous, and I hate people
        who earn money with cracks (what a transition!)...

³ODA:²    Is it true that you spend your life between pubs and Amiga ?

³MBS:¹    Naaaah ! This is not true: you forgot girls !!!

³ODA:²    Please tell me your favourite demo, graphic artist, musician, coder,
        group.

³MBS:¹    This is a bit difficult to answer that because most of demo-freaks are
        not  regular  in  quality.  But anyway...  I except from this list, of
        course,  my  friends, to be really objective:  well, my favourite demo
        is  'Alfa-Omega'  from PMC; I found graphics from RACK in 'Ray of Hope
        2'  quite  good; there is only one musician whose I liked all tunes he
        made,  Romeo  Knight; about coding, my judgement is based on skill and
        originality:  the 3 names that come to me are Azatoth, T.Landspurg and
        Cocy;  I  have  no  really  favourite  group:   I  like  PMC,  Rebels,
        Phenomena, Cryptoburners...  Nothing new!

³ODA:²    Ok ! Thank you bud... What about little messages?

³MBS:¹    Well I would send 2 messages:
         -  to  CROQUIK  /  DREAMDEALERS:  I don't know you dude, but what you
        told  in Top-Secret issue 8 was wrong:  DRD were not the first to make
        filled  3D;  the  first  3D  demo,  as  far as I know, was released by
        PHOENIX  during summer 1989.  Further more, we (THE DRIFTERS) released
        a  filled-3D  lame  intro  in  May 1990.  Sorry...  But anyway, no war
        please !
        -  to  ZOZO  / MAJIC 12:  I'm surely not the first, and sureley not he
        last, to tell ya that Top-Secret is pretty good.  But I found 2 little
        bugs:   first,  there are some troubles with printer:  if switched on,
        its  icon  badly flashes or isn't drawn, and if switched off, its icon
        is  sometimes  drawn  and  sometimes  not too, but if you click on it,
        everything become freezed.
        Second,  there are troubles with music:  if you remove a disk from its
        floppy,  music  is  broken  and there's no way to get it back.  If you
        switch it off, there's sometimes no way to get it back too !