utopian's blog

Back from Inspire, and some changes in the blog

2008-05-11T17:15:00.005+02:00

Wow, it's been quite a long time :). I could define myself as an "almost retired" scener, since I have not produced anything for more than two years, but this weekened I have come back... well, just a bit. I have attended to the Inspire demoparty, organized by my friends at rgba.

So... what about the party? The partyplace was very nice & clean, and it has a looooot of room for expansion. The video & sound system were excellent (actually too loud for the place, the volume had to be quite low to be ok), and the sleeping place, although a couple of kilometers away from the party place, was also good. The only "complain" is that, if the party gets bigger, there will be a need for a real bus service to the sleeping place. For now, we managed to get there using the orgo's cars :).

Scene-wise, my only contribution to the party was persuading iq to finish his 4k intro, and giving him my computer to do so. As usual, we had last-minute problems, but finally the intro worked ok and got the 1st place. BTW, JosSs' music is f*cking awesome, congrats man!

Probably the best overall result of the party was that I may now feel like getting back to doing some scene work. I can't promise anything, and most probably I won't do anything high-end anymore, but doing stuff for my good old ZX Spectrum is an option... At least, I could reuse some of my knowledge from the retro game scene.

Oh, and as a last thought, I will probably be changing the orientation of this blog. Since I'm not really an active scener, it makes no sense for me to keep a scene-only blog (and let's admit it, one post a year is not that much). I will slowly add retro content there, about coding and experimenting will retro stuff.

As an example, I have recently purchased an Altera DE-1 board, and played a bit with it and the several implementations of old machines for it... Some of them may be of interest. Who knows.

Cannon Bubble!

2007-03-16T21:49:00.000+01:00

It's done! My first game for the ZX Spectrum is finished, and you can download it from the CEZ GS web page.

What can I say about it? Well, as with every demo, you need to take into account the machine limitations... Don't expect fancy 3D animations, after all it's just a Z80 with no dedicated graphics hardware :). But if you enjoy vintage gaming, I hope you'll like it.

The game was first presented last Saturday at the MadriSX retro meeting. It seems to be enjoying a warm welcome from the Spectrum scene, so I feel happy.

However, the last days before the game was released reminded me of the infamous days of party coding: the game was ready more than one week in advance (wtf!), but getting the turbo loader ready took too much time, and we had some last-minute panic when we started looking at alternative loaders. Fortunately (as in party coding) everything worked at the last moment, and the game was released.

And... one more resemblance with party coding. A few days after releasing the game, we realized that the last-minute changes had hit a nasty bug of some Spectrum models, also known as ULA snow. Well, you can never escape from Murphy's Law :) . It's fixed already, so prepare your hook to be the best pirate of the Caribbean Sea!

Multiscener!

2007-02-21T22:02:00.000+01:00

I remember first hearing this term when applied to Matrix/Centosis, quite a few Euskals ago. He was not only taking part in the scener section, but he also competed (and won) in some gamer contests. So the term "multiscener" could be translated into something like "traitor", or so :).

Why is this relevant, you may ask? Well, you will soon be able to practice your multiscener skills: the ZX Spectrum game I am coding with the CEZ GS crew is almost finished, and we are planning on releasing it during the MadriSX vintage meeting. I can't say much about the game, since almost everything is a secret, but at least I can say this: this kind of game has never been done before, at least not that I remember.

You may think that I am not very much involved in the scene these days, and you are probably right. I am not officially "retired", but I cannot say I am active. Let's say I am in a long holiday season :). However, I just checked Pouet a couple of days ago and found that Farbrausch has released a new demo. Wow! It is top of the month, I have to see it.

Looking at some comments, it looks like it has created some polemic. Ok, let's download it first and decide then. Downloaded, run... So what?

Pity, it is definitely not my kind of demo. I am sorry, but the ambient soundtrack doesn't make me feel anything, and the scenes (with some exceptions) fail in being impressive, either technically or visually. At least it is the closest I have been to enjoying an ambient/artish demo, but no, this is not my taste.

I find it interesting how this demo has drawn the line between two different "scene cultures". On one side, you have those who like technically great demos: iq, bonzaj, smash, navis... They see similar problems to those I saw. On the other side, you have the "scene is art" people: ps, nosfe, rainmaker... They see fr-055:828 as "the best demo ever". Well, fortunately opinions are like asses: everybody has one ;).

BTW, one final thought: rgba is not dead (yet). At least iq is alive and coding, so expect some surprises in the future ;).

It's party time!

2006-10-11T09:31:00.000+02:00

Yep, finally! After more than one year away from parties, I will be going to the BCNParty this weekend. Everything is ready: I have paid the entrance fee, I have the plane tickets and a hotel reservation. Yes, a hotel... You know, I am getting older (31 years since last Monday), and this time I will bring the family with me, so sleeping on the floor is not an option anymore.

I am looking forward to meet my scene friends, or at least those who can attend to the party :), and also some guys from the vintage zone. And, for the first time, I will go out and see something about Barcelona! Well, it looks like it isn't going to be my "traditional" kind of party, but I expect to have some fun nonetheless.

Producing? Hmm... well.... this...

What else could go wrong?

2006-09-11T19:39:00.000+02:00

I know it's been a long time since my last update, and this update is not very scene-related, but I need to tell this to someone, or else I'll explode. So here we go...

Everything started yesterday afternoon. I was going to take a plane to London Gatwick, as I am attending a training course this week. Just at the check-in counter I was told that the plane had a long delay (more than 1 hour). Ok, not a big issue, I can wait for a while...

But this "while" became more than 2 hours. I arrived to Gatwick at 22:15, instead of the planned 20:10. Then things started getting funny: while the airport was nearly empty, it took them 40 minutes (!) to take the luggage out of the plane and give it to me. And now I have to take a train to my final destination (Guildford), but luckily there's a train station at the airport, so the connection should be fast...

Guess what, there are two terminals, and the train station is not in the same terminal as I am. I have to take a train to go to the other terminal. In non-peak hours, the train goes every 6 minutes, and I see there are 5 minutes left for the next train. So I just missed the previous one :(. Wait 5 minutes, rush to the train station, check the timetable, and surprise, the last train to Guildford departs at 23:07, and the clock shows 23:06:47 as the local time.

Well, things could not get any worse, could they? After paying 60 pounds for a taxi ride, the taxi driver does not know where my hotel is in Guildford. After asking 3 people, we are told that we are a couple of minutes away from the hotel (walking), and I prefer to get down the taxi and walk. I find the street, but after 5 minutes walking I realize I am going the wrong direction :((. In the first lucky moment after a few hours, I find some nice Brazilian guys who help me find the hotel. Thanks!!

Ok, it's late, I'm tired, but I'm at the hotel, nothing wrong can happen. Big mistake. They need to check my credit card and... hey, the connection to the Visa servers does not seem to work. Half an hour later, the hotel guy gives up and gives me my room key.

Oh, well, everything else has been more or less ok for the last few hours, with the only exception that it looks like nobody here knew I was coming for the training. They quickly solved it, after all.

So, if you ever have trouble when travelling, think it could always get worse ;).

BTW, I promise my next update will be soon, and somehow scene-related. Just to keep the interest :).

Daddy utopian

2005-12-20T22:32:00.000+01:00

Yep, a bit earlier than expected (3 weeks), but I am now a father. It was last December 15, so it took me 5 days just to touch a computer and start uploading photos. If any of you feels curious, you can check Marta's online album here.

I have no more time right now, I will update the post when I have some (some day in the future :), to add some more details. Just one word about being a father: everyone out there should try it.

Scene holidays

2005-11-04T17:29:00.000+01:00

Everything looks sooo quiet these days... Maybe it's because everyone is very busy preparing new productions for the BCN Party, who knows :). BTW, I will not be there this year. I filled my party quota this year with Euskal and Breakpoint, so I will have to wait until the next year.

I am currently having a kind of "scene holidays". That is, I am spending my free time doing some non-scene stuff. I needed some rest, doing something different, to avoid getting bored and losing motivation. Anyway, I cannot stay away from computers, so my current hobby is to make games for retro-computers. I have to accept it, I am a nerd :P.

I have joined the CEZ GS team, a group of talented people who make games for long dead computers. I am starting to develop a game for my good old spectrum, but it's still in an early development phase, so I cannot give many details.

It's funny to forget about OpenGL, GHz processors, GPUs... and go back to some hardcore coding: 3.5 MHz, less than 128k of RAM and lots of color restrictions. That gives you a warm oldskool feeling

Different groups of sceners

2005-08-31T20:45:00.000+02:00

It's time for some random thoughts today.

The scene has traditionally been split into two groups, fighting each other: amiga vs PC, newskool vs oldskool, Gravis vs the rest... Now, I'm starting to think that there is a new category: "the party is outside" vs "the party is inside".

The first group tends to enjoy the "social" aspect of parties, such as boozing, live sessions, talking to other fellow sceners, etc, and dislike party coding or anything related to sitting in front of the computer for more than a few minutes. They also defend the idea of bringing a fully finished prod to the party, or bringing nothing at all.

The second group is what most people call "nerds". They usually spent the whole party doing party coding, aren't good at common partying, and usually are less "popular" than members from the first group.

I have always felt closer to the second group than to the first one, but also thought that there's always a time for everything. But I have suddenly come to the conclusion that I will never reach the first group. Why? You may ask.

Well, you may have heard about the Playboy Mansion Party. Everyone who has attended says it's "Like... best party -ever-... by far". It looks like it was a paradigm of the "party is outside" kind of party: pool, sessions, lots of people in a relaxed environment... And apparently nobody from the "party is inside" kind of people.

The reason for this is that the party was invite-only. Ok, that's not something to be criticized. It's their party and they do what they want. The only thing that makes me think is that no rgba member was invited, even though half of the European scene seems to have been there, according to the amount of people who came back saying wonderful things about the party.

Before anyone starts shouting "you jealous", even if I had been invited I'd probably have not attended, mostly because of my personal life. But it's interesting to see what people think about you, and how they put their thoughts into action.

Enough mental masturbation for today. Time to make something useful.

Becoming a father

2005-08-19T09:19:00.000+02:00

Ok, It hasn't taken me long to write my first non-scene-related post, but this one is worth the exception. My wife will have a baby by the end of this year or the beginning of 2006. This is no big news, I knew it since some months ago.

News is that I just learnt that the baby is going to be a girl. Her name will be Marta. I'm happy, even though I am back from vacation.

Crossing the deadline, or some funny things about the 195/95/256 intro

2005-08-16T17:53:00.000+02:00

After reading this post on sole's blog, I thought it'd be a good idea to tell some insights about our 195/95/256 intro. This is the kind of things that I usually like hearing from other people, so it might be of some interest for my first "real" post.

First of all, something that many people may not know: this was the first prod where we made some use of a custom intro tool... Wait a minute, a demo group without a tool??? Well, yes :). As iq usually says, we have little time to code, so we dedicate this time to make demos/intros, not tools :P.

The funny thing about it is that we only used the tool for about half an hour during the party (!!). We suddenly realized that we had some "design flaws", basically that the intro had some structures using function pointers, and those functions were hard-coded and being modified all the time... so there was no way to integrate them into the tool at that time. We had to revert to the old manual way of doing things (in fact, iq seemed to be more comfortable with this way), and we only used the tool to get the intro timings.

This was a good way to waste the effort we made since the Breakpoint, were we started designing the tool... But don't worry, I have started a tool redesign, so maybe some time in the future we'll see an rgba prod using it :).

Another interesting (and criticized) point about the intro is the music. Well, everything I can say here is wait and you'll see... Jewoll's version of the demo track was just great. He finished it just two days before the deadline, and I was amazed when I heard it. It was soooo close to the original! By then I thought that Gortu's softsynth was finished, but I found out I was wrong :(.

I'm not really aware of the softsynth inner workings, but all I can say is that it is a very ambitious project. Gortu spent the whole party trying to finish it (his red eyes were the proof), but we ultimately found that a) not all instruments were implemented, and b) some of the implemented instruments were buggy... The intro even crashed in my laptop if I enabled the music.

So maybe you will understand now why the music doesn't sound as it should, and why we had to wait until the very last minute to release the intro, even without knowing if the piano would play at all, or it would destroy the speakers :). It sounded bad, but at least no one was harmed by the sound.

Don't worry, Gortu is working on it, and the final version will have a much improved sound.

Ok, enough for my first post. Time to do something else.

Yet Another scener blog

2005-08-16T15:22:00.000+02:00

Ok, I did it. I finally decided to create my own blog. For those of you who do not know about me, I am Javier Peña, a.k.a utopian, a coder of the rgba demogroup. With this kind of introduction, you might assume that my blog will be mainly scene-related...

Well, it will, but if I get enough confidence on my blogger skills I will start adding some more topics about my real life, some other non-scener interests, random ranting, etc.

I'll try to write most of my posts in English, but I can't guarantee that I will do that 100% of the time... You know, I'm old and lazy ;). So, if you find a post in Spanish and can't understand it, just skip it or ask for a translation :P.

So, welcome everyone!