AN
INTERVIEW WITH
CORBEAU OF DUNE
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Corbeau is a coder who seems to have been part of DUNE for the very start
since his name appears in many prods including * ILLUSION * that was finally
released some months ago or better said almost 10 years after it was first
hear of... Still the guy is quite unknown to many of us, including me, so I
thought it was a good opportunity to learn more about him especially as he's
been deeply involved in the great FANTASIA demo too !
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STS : Hi Corbo, or should I call you Corbeau (French word for 'crow') as your
nick seemed to be spelled so in the previous years ?
CORBO : Hi. Corbo or Corbeau, it's as you want.
STS : let's start with the usual info : can you tell us more about you like
name, age, occupation and scene background ? Have you been a DUNE member from
the early years of the crew ? What computers do you currently own and use ?
CORBO : My name is Francois Kermorvant, i'm french and i'm living in Paris.
I'm 30 years old. I was a Dune's member before Dune ;). The first crew was
LBF and it was an Evil Metal's creation, in 1990. Then, Mic and others guys
joined us, and we changed the name. I programmed some average demos, like
'Mathematiques Squizophrenes', 'Graal' or 'Petit Papa Noel'.
I have a PC, and i use Steem or SainT if i have something to do on ST.
There's no place in my flat for another computer.
STS : DUNE came back to the Scene around 1999 with a couple of stylish intros
(including for Toxic 18) like MEMORIAL or PARADISE but what happened to you at
that time since your name doesn't appear in the credits ?
CORBO : I worked for Quantic Dream and it wasn't possible for me to code
anything else. It was not a question of time. I didn't have any motivations
to code anything else than what I did at work.
STS : Let's get back to ILLUSION, surely DUNE's biggest and fullest demo as it
comes on 2 floppies ! Can you tell us about your involvement in this demo and
how you came to stop your scene activities after this project ?
CORBO : Illusion was a project from Evil Metal and Obi Wan. At these time, I
worked on my own 3D engine and some games' projects, like Space Fighter. Evil
Metal asked me to make a small screen with texture mapping because I'd made it
for my engine. But there wasn't any optimizations, so it's very slow compare to
others ST's screens with texture mapping. I stopped programming demos because
was more interested in games development.
STS : Do you still have contacts with other DUNE members and what memories do
you have of these years ? I have read in FANTASIA's greetings that you wrote
"forget the bad days" when you referred to Evil Metal. How were your relations
with DUNE's mastermind ?
CORBO : The contact with Morton and Mic has never been broken. There were 3
periods for us. The first was the crew's creation and demomaking. The second
was Frontier Software and our beginning in games' creation. And the last,
since the end of our collaboration with Frontier, has been our individual
professionnal experience in different studios.
It's another story with Chuck...but i think he would tell you his Dune's story
better than i should. And last year, he asked me to make the texture's mapping
part of Fantasia. I'd left Quantic Dream and I didn't nothing else to do... So
I did it.
For what I wrote about Evil Metal in Fantasia, it was about a stupid story :
Mic, Morton, I and others, we left Frontier Software with some conflicts
with Evil Metal and his father. It was the bad days... But Evil Metal remains
a great guy.
STS : Again in FANTASIA you focused on new school fx while Chuck emphasized
the old - but great looking - school parts. What's your opinion about new and
old school screens ? Both surely are great (no stupid debate here) but I would
like you to express your own views.
CORBO : Now, I think it's very difficult to do a 'never done effect' on ST in
50 fps. But i'm not a partisan of 'all in C2P'. I don't like bump fx, things
like that. I prefer to try another way...
STS : You are now working on another amibitious demo called MY GALAXY and I've
heard that you were intensively working on more new school stuff. Without
unveiling everything, can we expect to read a bit more about it ? Any release
date in mind ?
CORBO : I'm not sure if that will be a 'new school demo'. I try to do some new
effects with old things like sprites. There is a lot of things to do with
sprites ;). There's currently no date, but I hope it will be launched before
2014.
STS : While MY GALAXY seems to be a more personal dream, other DUNE members
have already announced their forthcoming demo, namely SEEDS, due to be STe
based. Will you also give Chuck and Mic a hand in this demo ?
CORBO : Yes, sure. I'm waiting for a call from Chuck about it...
STS : Have you ever considered moving to Falcon ? Maybe even on Amiga or PC ?
Hehe maybe you already have done things on these machines, but I know nothing
about the situation :)
CORBO : I worked on Falcon, but never had one. I and Florent Gondoin had begun
a big project on this computer, called Elixus, but we never finished it. Frost
has one version of this game. I worked as programmer on Omikron-The Nomad Soul
on PC and Dreamcast. Now, I'm essentially working on PC.
STS : By the way while Chuck and Mic attended the awesome ERROR IN LINE 3
party, you were not to be seen what seems unlogical considering your current
level of activity... I suppose you attended tons of parties before but are you
now thinking of crossing the line and meeting your fellows, for instance next
Easter in the Netherlands ?
CORBO : You know i'm very lazy ;). But i'm going to think about the Easter...
STS : You've been hanging around on #atariscne for some months now, what do
you think of the people you met compared to the "old" Scene (understand the
Scene from the Golden Years) ? Do you think, like some fellows who knew the
Grand Scene that today people are more friendly ?
CORBO : It was different. I remember some great conversations in coding
parties, and there were great guys. But there always was a war beetwen some
crews and a lot of arrogance. Now, I think that people of the Atari scene are
more interested how they can continue on Atari. It's just a passion, not a
competition. It seems to me more mature and more pleasant.
STS : What do you think of accelerating cards like the very promising CT060 ?
Are you drawn to them or clinging (like me :) to the good old ST limitations ?
CORBO : I'm not interested in the CT060. First, because I don't have a
Falcon. And if I had one, I think I would prefer to have one or more
additionnal DSP, like Maxxout dreamed. I'm not bound by 'ST limitations'.
It's a real pleasure to code in 68000. Sometimes, when i want to test an
algorithm, i prefer to make it with Devpac rather than on PC in C++, just
because I think more efficiently in 68000 than in any other programming's
language.
STS : Have you watched new school demos when you came back to the ST ? Sure
current demos can keep up with the one frame rule, but maybe you were (or not)
impressed by latest demonstrations ?
CORBO : Posh, Into The Darkness and others are great. I just regret that they
are too grey and too concentrate on C2P.
STS : I cannot think of more questions at the moment, so take a deep breath
and fill in the blanks with whatever comes to you :
C : Chucky, Mic and the others...
O : O'l Dirty Bastard
R : Robots of Kraftwerk and Robots of Asimov.
B : Bird aka Charlie Parker
E : eXistenZ is not a game
A : AtAriiiiiiiiiiiii is not Infoggggrrrrrrrrmmm
U : the UUUUnion demo
D : David Braben
U : Ubik, by P.K. Dick
N : Naked Lunch, by W. Burroughs
E : Edda by Snorri Sturluson
STS : Thanks a lot for giving me some of your time ! I think that your next
demo will strenghten the idea that we have another high end coder (Defjam,
you'd better feel worried :). Any message or greeting you would like to add ?
CORBO :hmm...I'm looking for a job, so... ;) More seriously, I have a thought
for Spiral. RIP.
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