I used to be a part of the demo scene. It seems like ages ago. It was.
Phew! Thanks Brian for linking to my old demo scene website. God, it’s an awful site, but a mine of history for me. I get very nostalgic when I run old demos I wrote over 10 years ago. *sigh*
Back then I coded on the ol’ C64, made lots of friends in the scene, both in Ireland and abroad.
Way back around 1989 I bought a book on assembly coding on the C64. I’m almost 100% certain it was in that bookshop in Paul St. in town (Sorry Martina, I don’t think Waterstones was open then!). I sat at the bus stop, in the warm sun, waiting for the bus to come, and flicking through the book, thinking to myself, “no way, this stuff is way over my head.” I’m really glad I stuck with it. I liked it because it was close to the metal. There weren’t any fancy APIs, it was just plain assembly and an action replay to debug.
I’ve gone to the other extreme now, doing all my work in PHP and Unix scripting languages. I’d bawk at having to write anything in even C nowadays! Maybe.. I want to do some sort of demo coding again, nothing fancy you know, but just to keep myself familiar with my roots. Stay posted. Links to demo stuff to follow!
