AN
INTERVIEW WITH
RAY
OF TSCC
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Foreword : for years the name of tSCc rang in harmony with technical effects,
design and great music. They brought us 15 modules compilations and quite many
single screens like their incredible bumpmapping and phong in 4Kb ! Today the
band is recuded to his last survivor MC Laser, Moondog joined him recently but
so far no release date for his diksmag has been announced :( Last night, MC
Laser told me they had a new coder, named Ray ! God, that was a great piece of
news and I __immediately__ decided to give him the opportunity to talk about
himself :)
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sts : hi Ray ! Before we unveil your past and projects, we'd like to know more
about you, your name, age, occupation, any thing you think could be interesting
ray:
hi sts, so, my real name is 'reimund dratwa' or as english/american people
would say 'raymond' so my nick is 'ray'.
i'm only 17 years old and i come dusseldorf/germany.at the time i still
vistit school (11th grade, it's called 'oberstufe' in germany) and im
going to do the 'abitur' (the terminal examination of the 'oberstufe') -
so i'm still pupil...
apart from programming i got two main other hobbys, as well:
i play the drumset and the electric-guitar...
hmm, that's all to say about me, i think.
sts : now, tell us about your first steps on Atari, already several years back
if I got it right. What machines do you own/use today ?
ray:
i got an 'atari mega st 1 with a megafile 30 and a sm124 monochrome monitor'
when i was about eleven years old. i never seriousely used it to play games (i
think i only played 'loom' and some of those standard 'shoot 'em ups')...
until i saw having omikron-basic on my HDD...so i started it to see what it
is (hey, i never got into programming before).
since i had the manual and looked at the demo-programs i finally realized
that om-basic is a programming language, he he.
so i decided learn om-basic and i was really curious what i'll be able to
do with it.
i wrote some crappy apps (like some program which lets you adjust the sys-
tem colors and stuff).
this was time when i had to inquire all that electronic stuff...so i also
opened my mega and it's HDD (aaaghh !).
and about a week later the HDD was cracked up because the head had sticked
on the disk and when i swiched it on , yes, the head was teared off (don't
ask me why i ever did this !!)
in the following time i had to work with disks, that sucks, really...
i was about 13 or 14 when i bought a shitty i386 and the next time i was
completely involved into intel specific work (i also was inspired by games
like wolf3d and doom)...so i didn't do anything with my atari for some
month :(.
but fourtunately i managed to repair the atari's HDD (belive me: we had
an old ibm XT - and somehow its hard disk could be hooked up with the
megafile, so my HDD was spinning again, yeah).
and that was the time where i first got in touch with 68k asm.
i had got a book teaching 68k asm and because i was really interested
in doing something new, i read it and tried to give my best whith
E-softs turboass.
yes i wrote those standard progs like enter 'your name...hi name', or
'bin2hex' and 'dec2hex' and all these things...the first thing i did
by myself was a quick putpix rout setting pixels in ST low rez and
it seemed to be quite alot faster than line-A $A001...
today i got internet and i notice that the atari scene is still alive
not only in its way...
there are still cool parties and conventions, really great, as i think...
by now i only got the 'mega st' (ugraded to 2.5 mb ram) with a 'sc1224'
color mointor and stereo sound (yeah, there are many simple hardware
modifications floating around out there in the internet).
but i still write plain st appz not even using the blitter and i never
got in touch with the 'better' machines like the falcon or the tt.
only diffrent thing was the 'ste 1040' i once lend by a friend for
some days...
sts : how did you come to know tSCc ? Did you meet them ? Howcome they offered
you to join them ? what's your status and who's still active in the band ?
ray:
i was kinda funny - i knew there site long ago, especially their link site,
but i never got to know more about them, as i said i just used their link
site...
as moondog happened to visit rd-developments' site (my old 2 people 'crew',
which just consists of me now, 'cause the second member left rd-developments)
he wanted to get some info about us for his diskmag...
so i got attentive at .tSCc.'s site once more and read that they're looking
for 68k coders since their groupwork seemed to be quite down.
considering my 'crew' seemed to be quite down as well i decided to conact
mc laser asking him to join .tSCc.
as he gave his 'ok' and the site-update was up i was official member of
.tSCc. .
the funny thing is that moondog asked me to join .tSCc. in one of
his following emails, too. at this time i already had joined .tSCc. .
hmm, i never met .tSCc. by now - hopefully i'll see them at one of the
next parties...
as already mentioned indirectly i'm coder at .tSCc.
still active people at .tSCc. are:
- the first coder llama
- mc laser, of course (musix man)
- moondog (gfx. man)
- gizmo (gfx. man)
- me...
(mc laser is my source - so these infos are not obligatory :) )
sts : most people around will only wish for one thing now : your first tSCc
production : do you have any in the pipeline ? What should we expect and when?
ray:
at the moment i'm doing a little boring plasma screen for .tSCc. which shall
be finished within some days. but i don't know if it'll be ever released by
.tSCc. (be sure: you can download some of my own productions at
'http://www.rd-developments.de.gs', maybe even this plasma screen)
im also working on several other efx. like fire, a floormapper and a
raycaster (not only for rd-developments' wolf3d port, but also for a
demo).
sts : what are your views regarding the current state of the Atari Scene ?
a
ray:
simply: it's seems to be pretty alive, especially this year !
and what i appreciate as well is the development of powerful
atari clones like the milan...
sts : can we hope to run into you at a coding party someday ? Will you attend
STNICCC for example ?
ray:
hmm, yes, i am going to visit ST NEWS this december and maybe i'll visit
the ERROR IN LINE party next year...
sts : what do you think of clones or accelerating cards ?
ray:
i never got in touch with accelerators or clones actually but i'll
say some words on them, though:
somehow i don't like acceleration cards because they seem to be quite
provisional and they aren't supported by many appz and games apart from
nvdi's graphic-card support but that's another story...
if the coder's work is great - you don't need to accelerate or manipulate
your atari :).
clones are great if they remain as 'atari st/tt/falc.-compatible' as
possible, otherwise they shouldn't be called clones !
sts : name your favourite games and demos on an Atari machine
ray:
games: prince of persia (french st-version), substation ste, don't ask
me why but i like 'super hang on' very much
demos: llamas tunnel efx. are pretty great, nostalgia, sure trip, some
of the newer dhs productions
sts : brainstorming ahead ! Fill in the blanks and add your own comments if you
wish to
ray:
A : atari-machines are great
B : be aware: atari is alive
C : code cool demos and be proud of, hehe !
D : don't know what to say
E : ever destroyed an intel-machine ?
F : fuck intel !
G : go out, play hide and fuck you bill !
H : hate intel !
I : i love 68k coding
J : jsr destroymicrosoft
K : keep the scene alive
L : less is more, love is blind (nirvana song 'stay away')
M : motorola builds great CPUs !
N : noway, building 750mhz CPUs isn't that great, rather develop some new techs,
intel !
O : oh no, please not, windows 2000 professional is out ??!XX - aaaaaarrghh !!...
P : .....please save me, aaarrrgh.....
Q : quote: intel suckz !
R : remember: microsoft suckz, too !
S : segments and offsets, stupid intel-invention, hehe !
T : twenty bits address-bus, once more, stupid intel-invention !
U : uuughh, intel got 100mhz more out of their new cpu, hehe !
V : vegetables make me throw up, sorry
W : windows suckz (i'm using it though, sorry)
X : XMS, again stupid intel/microsoft invention !
Y : yeah, atari rulez !
Z : zzz, don't know what to say anymore
sts : here comes the final one : I'm giving you the occasion to greet or fuck
ppl, send a message or promote a project, use it :)
ray:
i'd like to greet .tSCc., cream (especially candyman), dhs, damion p jones,
j cheseldine shalroth and everyone who's still involved in atari specific
work, good luck anyway.
thanx to the people at .tSCc. for letting me join their crew...
hmm, there's one guy i would like to kill and destroy: bill gates and his
capitalistic concern, which more or less destroyed all the alternative
computer platforms !
...to fuck ?...'julia achenbach' !
and here's the promotion part:
watch out for rd-developments' wolf3d port (for Atari STs) -
'http://rd-developments.de.gs' i hope the guys at .tSCc. will help me :)
that's it - thanx.
sts : thanks for answering all these questions and good luck with your current
projects !
ray:
no problem, see yer
ray of .tSCc.
eof
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