Ymgve at 15:58, 29 November 2007

2007-11-29T15:58:52Z

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THE BIG INTERVIEW!!!

You will have to excuse it if the text is a little
mismatched, but this is converted from PC (using my
new Magazine Editor) then converted to Raz's editor!

Here is the start of a series of interviews with some
VERY well known guys in the C64 scene today. I
start this series with a very well known Dutch
scener, who (in my opinion) is famous for never
being stuck for a word...Founder member of easily
the best Dutch group(and one of the best in the
scene!)...Welcome TDJ/FOCUS!!!

TDJ: Thanks MAD .. Nice to finally meet somebody who
asks me for an interview and actually conducts
one as well !! Hasn't happened since 1989 or so..

MAD: Give the readers a brief description about
yourself...

TDJ: Sure. I'm 24 years of age, and I live
in The Hague,Holland (where I study
computer science) for almost 3 years now, with
my girlfriend Petra. We have a small but nice
apartment in the centre of the city, - everything
you can think of (shops, cinema's, clubs etc) are
in walking distance, which is good as I used to
live with my parents in the country between farms
.. As for the way I look, I'm not going to tell
you since I can't imagine anybody being interested
in that.

MAD: How long have you been on the
C64 scene, andwhat other scenes are you a part
of?

TDJ: Well, I got my c64 in september 1984,
with a diskdrive on christmas that year and started
collecting demo's in 1986, when I became a member
of a notorious group of re-crackers called "Wild
Boys 86" under several handles (of which I managed
to forgot most, thank god .. Romancing The Disk
was one of them). In '87 I worked briefly under
the handle "WAM" (which are in fact my initials)
and released my first demo's for a group I founded
called Royal Swapping Force 2047 (RSF). Quite
funny is the fact that Nightshade/Success, who
only found this out at the X95 party, has a disk
with demo's from that group at home .. Anyway,
RSF was a local group with one big 'rival' in
the neighbourhood, a group called WWE (standing for
World Wide Expressive). When 3 of the 5 RSF members
went amiga I was asked to join WWE which I did
in february 1988 .. The first half year in WWE
was the best time I ever had, and I became great
mates with two of the other members (Charon &
Rhandor) who are until today still my best friends
in the world, next to my girlfriend ofcourse.
We had a nice time, released lots of demo's and
even became a bit famous, also thanks to a great
copyparty we held in october 1988 (Joy-Mgf-WWE
party). I myself did a lot of demo's, got in touch
with a lot of guys and things seemed to be improving
constantly. Until the summer of '89 that was,
when we formed a cooperation with TRC. After that
everything went wrong, most of the original members
left WWE and when the smoke cleared there were
just 3 members, of which I was the longest in
the group .. I tried to build up the group again,
even managed to do so I think but the joy was
gone, so in april of 1990, when I visited the
Horizon party in Sweden,I decided to look for
a new group, got some interesting offers and then
joined Science 451. My first production for them
was released at that same party, a demo called
"Midnight Oil" featuring a 25 chars high multi
color char scroll which could be steered both ways,
unfortunately they didn't show that on the screen
(the fact that it could go both ways).Back in Holland
I formed a subgroup of S451 as we had decided
I should do with 5 other ex-WWE members.The name
of this group was "Focus" and it was officially
founded on 21 april 1990 .. This is over 5 years
ago, in which time we released approx. 17 demo's
and (hopefully) proved to be one of the most
stylish groups in the c64 scene ever. Ofcourse
that is not such a hard thing to do considering
all the talented members I could work with ..Names
like Compyx, Mirage and Hein make most designlovers
drool I guess! Still, we had some hard times as
well, like in 1991 when a lot of dutch people
got upset with me because of some text I wrote
in a demo and even formed anti-groups against
me! The best thing in that period however was
the fact that all other Focus'ers stood behind
me. After winning the Silicon 2 party in the summer
of that year with "Visual Delight" things were
worked out and one of my biggest enemies then
(Action Jackson/TRC) is a good scene friend now
.. Success has its toll though, ours being the
fact that 3 of our members left us: Mirage who
had been in Censor as well decided to work for
them alone and Compyx & X-Byte both joined Black
Mail. Fortunately the latter 2 didn't like it
too much there and left just before Dutch Breeze
was released.Still, we took somewhat of a big
break (some people refer to it as '1992') and
early 1993 we released 4 demo's in a few months
time, returning us to the charts. Then on xmas
'93 (TP3) we won 3rd prize with a preview of
'Visual Delight 2', a demo we managed to postpone
to release until approx. one year later. And now
we are here, 14 guys, all dutch (like all Focus
members in the past as well) and hoping there
still is a public need for that which we create.
Because after the release of VD2 in january of
this year we got virtually no reactions which
made me so 'depressed' that I almost decided to
declare Focus dead ..Sorry to be this brief,
but as I understand there have to be more topics
in this mag than just 'the TDJ story' :)As
for the other scenes: I'm in an amiga group called
'Vivid', with Morris (good friend of mine, excellent
coder), Mirage, Hein and Cycleburner. On the
snes I'm in a trainer-group called 'Cyber Force'
but that's just for fun, actually I don't really
consider myself to be a member as I never did
anything worthwhile for them. Furthermore I'm
in another c64 group called 'Marvel' and finally
I'm in Bonzai (pc), a name which may ring a bell
for a lot of c64 sceners I guess ..Now, I
hope this wasn't too long an answer ??

MAD:
TDJ The Early Years, published first here in SkyHigh
magazine... Hmm, Marco, that was quite some answer!!!
I guess it is better than a one word answer though!
About Marvel, I guess many readers won't have
heard of Marvel (yet), so how about enlightening
everybody?

TDJ: Marvel is a c64 demogroup whose
members are all using internet some way or the
other so we can stay in touch rather easy. I started
the group about 18 months ago asking Metal,
Cycleburner and Mirage to join.They did, later
followed Tron, Unifier, Compyx, Mr.Sex and finally
BX. We haven't really started on anything yet but
hope to "hit the public there were it hurts most"
with something real nice soon enough. The only
problem is that there are several others I would
like to join but I don't want Marvel to be too big,
so for the moment we have a 'no more members'
rule. By the way, needless to say that all
members (apart from Unifier) are still in their
own group as well.

MAD: With a line up like that, I can't wait. Can you
let us all in on any projects?

TDJ: Okay, there will be a sort of introduction demo
coming quite soon, that is all I can say..

MAD: You mentioned also being in
Bonzai (PC) -How did you break the 'DANES ONLY'
rule when you joined BONZAI on the PC, along with
MIRAGE /FOCUS?

TDJ: Well, I didn't break it, they did :).
Anyway, I was exchanging e-mail
with Torben Hansen (Metal), who I've known ever
since he was a member of WWE. He was in Bonzai
and one day he came with the suggestion that Mirage
& me might be able to join as well. But there
was this DANES ONLY rule you already mentioned.
So he gave me the e-mail address of Trap, and
told me to write him a nice letter, maybe making
Trap change his mind. Well, it seems to have worked
as me & Trap became instant friends right away
and after a short while Mirage & me became part
of the Bonzai gang. After that a few more non-Danes
joined, such as MCA (dutch musician, also in Focus),
Unifier (who doesn't know this great swedish coder?)
and Freshman, who used to be in Spirit as well
under a different handle (from Germany). The big
catch here is that all foreign members except
for MCA are on internet so staying in touch isn't
that hard to do .. Ofcourse me & Mirage met some
of the Danes on the Party 4 where they were all
pleasantly surprised by the graphical skills of
my friend Lars (Mirage), as for instance Trap had
never seen any graphics by him before. Mirage even
won Bonzai another prize as he finished 3rd with
his picture in the PC/Amiga gfx compo (out of
a 150)!

MAD: Explain a bit about your Interent lifestyle...

TDJ: I'm a huge internet fan, for sure.
It 'gave back' so many of my old friends
such as Cycleburner, Bagder/HZ, Metal, HBH,
Destino and a lot of 'new' ones as well, like
Unifier, Mr.Sex, Bacchus, Tron, Maduplec and several
others. I used to spend quite a few hours per
day on writing e-mail, nowadays I can mostly be
found on irc, channel #c-64. I even have an home
account these days next to my school account, so
I can 'surf cyber' whenever I want to. I hate
to think what this means for my next phonebill
though :(. Now let me give you a small example
of why I love internet so much: this afternoon
I had just started irc, when somebody called 'Elf'
from Norway joined the channel as well. I wrote:
"Elf ?? I knew an Elf/WWE once from Norway" ..
Guess what ?? It was him !! Over 5 years since
I heard of him and here he was again, also knowing
right away who I was. Now that is great !! Another
great thing is that I finally get feedback on the
productions Focus has made. Even if it's negative,
it's better than nothing at all. And when I hear
that somebody thinks Visual Delight 2 is the best
designed and graphical demo of 1994, it makes
me feel real proud !! (Even though the preview
won 3rd prize in 1993 and the demo was finally
spread in 1995). By the way, those who
want to contact me on the 'net can do so by sending
some e-mail to

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (home) or XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (school)

MAD: Which computer/console do you find easier to
program on? What do you use to program
on these machines???

TDJ: Well, I'm kind of ashamed to actually
admit that I'm a real lazy bastard and even though
I've told people that I will start to code on pc
& amiga real soon for acouple of years already
(I even *did* start coding the amiga, in 1988, but
it wasn't a great success) I never actually made
any real attempts. I do code in Turbo Pascal (pc)
though, even did some demo-like thingies in it, which
are now considered to be a lethal weapon here
in Holland, so if I ever show them to somebody I
might be shot. Ofcourse I do code on the c64 as you
may have noticed, and I still hope to find enough
energy and faith to actually start coding other
machines, preferably the pc and the snes since its
m/l looks so much like that of the c64 ..

MAD: Which computer/console would you say will still
be around in 10 years?

TDJ: Well, that's very hard to say.
I had a brief discussion with Jeroen
Tel on it as a matter of fact, and he (like me)
thinks there still will be fools using their c64
in 2005 (of which I probably will be one). Alsothe
pc might be around but I guess it has evolved into
something so extremely powerful by then, I couldn't
even imagine what it will be like now .. S. Nintendo's
etc. will be outdated then ofcourse, that is already
happening as we speak. As for Amiga ?? I fear big
fears that it may not survive another 10 years as
well. :(

MAD: About FOCUS... How big is the group now?
Memberstatus?

TDJ: Like I have mentioned earlier on,
there are 14 guys in the group nowadays.
This has been so for over a year now, since the
last one joined in and I hope it will stay the same
(well, maybe the number of members will increase,
I've got a couple of people in mind who might
join if they would like to).As for the memberstatus:
Adam (code), Anorganic (code), Compyx (code,gfx),
Fonzie (swap), Heathcliff (code),
Hein (gfx), JVD (music),
MCA (music), Mirage (code,gfx), PDB (gfx), Sander
(gfx), VV (music). X-Byte (code)and yours truly
(code, organising).

MAD: That certainlyis some line-up! But how do you
rate yourself as a member of Focus ?

TDJ: Although I'm slowly realising that in fact
I am one of the more famous members of Focus, I
don't think that oding-wise I'm up to
staoders uld de' me
without too much of an effort.
I am lucky enough to be able to come up with
somewhat more original effects now and then, like
the 'zooming plasma', as some have
called it, in VD2, a part of which I am VERY proud.
Thus it seems very strange to me that *I* am in
the coding charts of some magazines
while the others (save for X-Byte & Compyx
sometimes) are not.
Ofcourse I realise that this has more to
do with me being well-known than my qualities, still
I must admit liking it. After all, we all want to
be respected and valued, right ?? But coming back
to my status as a Focus member: I think I am (big
arrogance) more than that. It was I who came up
with the idea of forming this group, I invented the
name and I am the only member ever who has been
in since day 1 and never left (Compyx was a founding
member as well but alas, his Black Mail days ruined
his trackrecord). Still I don't see myself as a
leader, more as an organiser, a mentor even. People
tell me that I have a gift to make them enthusiastic
towards the scene again and I often am surprised
myself to see that certain members, who haven't
done anything for ages, agree to start working on
a new part/music/picture when I ask them to.I
guess it has a lot to do with the fact that I never
'demand' something to happen, after all this is
a hobby and it is supposed to stay that way, don't
you agree ??
MAD: I certainly do. Hostile demands
meet with hostile rejections... While we are on
the subject of new products, what are FOCUS up
to these days? Any games, demos, utilities on the
way?

TDJ: We are working on several demo's but if there's
one thing I've learnt in all my scene-years
it's never to promise people something actually
will come out :). As for utilities: Compyx has a
couple of nice things he made for himself mostly,
e.g. a very good paint program called BDP, a program
he unfortunately seems to be the only one able to
work with. He also started something resembling
a game several times, in cooperation with several
other FOCUS members but never finished anything.
In fact he was asked to be the painter on Lemmings
after they dumped Nikaj Eijk (which I still think
was a rotten thing to do) but since his'love'
for Remi Ebus, the 'producer' of that game, wasn't
too big (like with the rest of us) it didn't take
him too long to stop working on that either.Two
of our members are working on some very commercial
stuff though. Hein & Mirage are both painting for
a pc-cd rom game and Hein is doinggraphics for
a SNES game as well .. But those activities have
nothing to do with Focus save for the fact that
they both are in that team ..We were also going
to do a demo-scene-only version of Shock but that
project has been put aside until further notice.
And finally me and Compyx are working on something
we call "The Book Of Demo's", a demo encyclopedia.
It will be several disks big and featuring some
kind of hyper-link system Compyx created and which
is very fast.
MAD: FOCUS have always paid much
attention on design. Do you feel that design is
the only thing left to improve on, on the C64? Do
you think that there is anything left to code on
this machine???

TDJ: I think there is room for much improvement
on both design and coding in the c64 world.
Up until now not too many demo's have found
the right balance between those, except for Tower
Power/Camelot and Dutch Breeze maybe. Truth is,
that whenever good graphics and design are used,
people tend to underrate the code. This happened
with Focus as well, in fact we have been dubbed
koala picture show routine makers' only a few weeks
ago by a member of a certain german group whose
name I will not mention here (I'll only tell you
that they won 2 important c64 compo's in a row,
hehe .. but I don't hold one guys' actions against
an entire group ofcourse). This makes me sad as
I know that we have several guys in our group who
could probably out-code them without any problems
but as our style hasn't left open too much room
to do just that until now, we were never able to
prove it. BUT !! Those in the scene who know how
to read may have noticed my "This is the end of
life but not as you know it" text in the scroll
in the final part of VD2. With that I meant that
we in Focus are (hopefully) going in a new direction,
featuring more original and better coding while
at the same time ofcourse not losing the design
and general graphical overkill we've been known
for. All I can say right now is "sit & wait, maybe
you'll be surprised"! Now let me ask you something,
as I'm always curious to find out, and please be
honest: how do you think Focus fits in the scene,
today and overall ?? Are we an above average group
leaning towards 'legendary status' or just another
demo-group, easily forgotten. Because I myself feel
we haven't reached the legendary status yet,
hopefully we will with our next demo's ..

MAD: HOLD ON TDJ!!! I don't think this mag will cope
with the masses of text you have written!

Time to LOAD the SECOND PART of this interview!!!

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR???

Skyhigh 17 About TDJ/Focus part 1 - Revision history

Ymgve at 15:58, 29 November 2007