AN
INTERVIEW WITH
NERVE OF CREATORS
-------------------------------- carried by Sts --------------------------------
NervE is a mystery to me : he is a survivor from famous ST crew IMAGINA and
from less known EFFECT crew and guess what ? Well the guy is still surviving !
Some months ago as the C64/Amiga CREATORS crew announced they planned to make a
step forward into the ATARI Scene. NervE joined them, soon followed by Blind'IO
and Exocet. So far not much has been heard from their ST section tho :(
Oddly, at Mekka 2002 NervE released a Falcon demo just when no one expected
such production from him. Also the demo - ATARI BEHN - was presented under the
EPHIDRENA label ! Are you lost ? Yeah me too :) Time for clearer explanations.
Hullo my hairy fellow ! Before we start I would like to remind our readers
that MC Laser already ran an interview with you back in 2000 (read UCM20).
Therefore I'll try not to bore you with the same questions.
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STS : Let's start with the usual ID stuff : please give us your real name,
age, occupation (whatever :), former crews and the origin of your nickname.
I hope you're fully awake coz this is a hot start !
NervE: Am i ever fully awake? Well, my name is Kaare Andersen, 24 years old,
and i dont work because i'm such a lazy bastard... Or maybe not ;) I've had
Atari computers for 2/3's of my life.. (and Sinclair and MSX computers before
that). Over the years i've been in some crews, most of the unknown because we
were just kids... In the early nineties, we (amongst others Zynx and Vangeliz)
had a STe crew called Ecstatic Minds. But before we ever made any demo
releases, we all joined Imagina. We had well some projects, but it kinda
stopped there, and Imagina didnt release anything more. Then Zynx and i joined
the PC crew Inferiors, as their Atari section. But nothing ever came out of
this either. Zynx became art and joined tbl, and i met the Effect crew on irc
and joined up with them, coz they were a bunch of cool people ;). My nickname
is something i came up with on a computer party about 93, while beeing very
much sleep deprived and trying to figure out how the nervous system works...
STS : how did you happen to join CREATORS ? I know they're from Norway too, so
that you may have had the occasion to meet them on parties maybe ? Does it
imply EFFECT is officially dead (tho it's clearly been for ages) ?
NervE: Actually, i never met them, or at least never talked to them before. I
dont really know much about the C64 scene, but i love watching the demos :)
The reason i joined was i met Mermaid on irc, we started talking and before
you know it she had talked me into joining :-) And i dont regret that, beeing
in an active crew with norwegian members feels good. I'm not sure when we will
be able to release something, but it shouldnt be too far away... About Effect
i really dont think its officially dead. I think you should ask Tronic about
this actually.
STS : next question seems quite obvious : tho you're now member of CREATORS
your Mekka 2002 Falcon demo was an EPHIDRENA prod, how come ? Does it mean
that CREATORS are not interested in coding F030 stuff ?
NervE: About that, the EPH demo came as a result of Frequent giving me music
and graphics for a demo. He had seen some of the weird code i had made, and
felt it was time for me to release something. Again, it feels great to work
with an active norwegian crew =) When it comes to Creators and Falcon i dont
know, but Mermaid currently only has an ST.
STS : I have to say that I am not familiar with Amiga crews but from what I
heard EPHIDRENA is a wellknown and very skilled democrew. Did you know them
before ?
NervE: I had heard the name, but didnt realize how good they were until i met
Frequent and saw some of their demos. It's a funny little story behind this :
One day Frequent had the word Atari in his mind for some reason. And he was
logging in on irc. Somehow his mind played a trick on him which made him type
#atariscne instead of #amigascne ! And as the irc addict i am, i was there
of course. When i saw his hostname ended with a .no, i was quick to start
asking questions, because norwegian Atarians is a rare species these days.
And that was the start of a friendship... =) Some time later Frequent aquired
a MegaSTe, which i bought from him. Then i talked him into buying a Falcon -
the result is one more Atariscener :) I met some more EPH members at Mekka,
and found out that they are crazy nice people!:)
STS : Should we think of you as a part-time member or do you plan to release
more stuff under this label ?
NervE: What will happen with EPH, Atari and me is a still not public
information ;) If you are alive you will see...
STS : Back to your latest release, ATARI BEHN, which came as an unexpected
demo entry while major ATARI crews totally missed the point. I suppose you had
been working on the demo for some time. Tell us more !
NervE: I had been coding on a bunch of simple bitmap effects for some time, but
i didnt realize i was about to make a demo out of it until a few weeks before
Mekka, alltho Frequent was talking about it. But when he gave me music and
graphics and a ride to Mekka, i couldnt refuse. But the demo was far from
finished when we left for the party. So i did parts of the demo (mostly the
timing system) in the cabin on the ferry down to germany... Cabin coding is
fun =) I also did some parts at the party, like the intro picture part and
the effect scheduling. This is probably why the demo ended up so messy. The
resolutions were one of the last things i made, quite close to the deadline.
So they were not really well tested and that gave some funny results on many
monitors. The demo will probably look different on different monitors, which is
in my opinon kinda funny;) Anyway i will take care of if, have done a bit work
on it and i will finish it when i get my CT60, so i can ensure it will work
there too, and possibly add some bonus features for accelerated machines.
STS : What about the strange config required to run the party version ? When
can we expect to enjoy it with (more or less) standard requirements ?
NervE: It requires a VGA monitor and 14Mb of ST-RAM. The RAM issue can be fixed
so that it will work with 4Mb ST-RAM and 8Mb (or more) TT-RAM. I will add some
RGB support. And perhaps a better animation system to compress the anims better
so it will run on 4Mb machines aswell. Alltho i didnt realize people still were
using 4Mb machines, as RAM is not at all expensive anymore. My bad!;)
STS : Let's have a look into the crystal ball : do you have other projects in
the pipeline or was ATARI BEHN a unique lifesign ? What about CREATORS ?
NervE: If it was unique, it sure wasnt the last you've seen of me. I'm more
dedicated now than i've been for many years. Hope you can get used to my style
over time... What about Creators?;)
STS : you appeared on the Mekka Symposium 2002 party held last Easter. Now can
we hope to grab you at more ATARI specific party like ERROR IN LINE 3 ? You
surely seem to be a friendly bloke and most of us would surely like to meet
you at last.
NervE: I would certainly like to meet all of you great people too!:) If i find
a way, i will come.
STS : Since you've been on ATARI for more than a decade, you must have a
strong opinion about the current Scene, esp compared to the Golden Times. Are
you still on ATARI for nostalgia or do you think we're not ready to die ?
NervE: Atari is in no way dead or even dying ! There is constant development
and i think we can continue this somehow until we all are old guys with long
white beards (Gandalf theme ;) Some renewal wont hurt the scene tho - i think
we have to combine the new with the old. It would be nice if we were able to
communicate better with the other scenes. Especially the Amiga scene, and i know
they want to know more about us too. Theres so much inspiration to be shared...
STS : let's see what ghosts are trapped into your mind with our home cooked
brainstorming. Fill in the blanks with whatever comes to you right now :
N : nocturnal
E : dont touch 'em
R : re
V : velocity
E : i repeat dont touch 'em
E : you deaf?
P : philosophy
H : herb
I : illustrate
D : drum and bass
R : repetition
E : what did just i say?
N : noodles vs. noodle soup
A : Ari Behn who?
+ :
C : CT60
R : rgb? i think not!
E : you should know this by now...
A : amigaone anyone?
T : Tramiel Operating System
O : origo
R : reset button
S : so is that all?:)
STS : Yeah I know it was tricky but hey you're the one who belongs to so many
crews at once :) Now that you're completely mentally dried up, do you have a
final message to your ATARI or AMIGA fellows ?
NervE : Unite! Share! And keep up the good work!
STS : thanks for the time you spent with us and let the FUJI force be with
you !
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