We are coders, we are a group!

When I got online in 1996, I met a lot of coders.

At that time, I was fascinated with game authoring and computer demos. Groups like Future Crew and Asphyxia were strong inspiration. So some of us decided to get into the demo scene ourselves, and we formed a group, comprising of Srivatsa K. Srinivasan, Chirayu Krishnappa, Vijay R. Gangolli, Vinit Bhansali, C. R. Sandeep, Chetan Nagendra and myself.

Vijay setup a mailing list in mid-1997, and ideas started to fly to and fro. I had this idea for a game based on dreams — where the physical scenario changes depending upon the situation. Considerable time was spent planning on how to build game maps that changed as the main character walked around.

Then I decided that 2D was boring and 3D was in. So I discarded my tiles and sprites and learnt how fixed point and BSP worked. Binary Space Partition is the math algorithm that Doom, Quake (I/II/III) and most other 3D games still use because it's simple and fast. BSP's downside is that it does not allow for moving objects like elevators and game characters. They therefore have to be rendered using traditional ray tracing algorithms which are computationally very expensive.

I spent most of 1997 learning to program in 32-bit DOS and building a multimedia library that included a graphics engine, an audio mixer and an IPX based networking engine (games at that time used Novell's IPX for network games, not TCP/IP). At the same time, Vatsa build a 2D image morphing engine and then a 3D ray tracing engine. The plan was to merge his code with my library.

But by November 1997, I lost interest. Vatsa and I were the only ones who had found time to do any coding, and we hadn't a product to show the world yet. The demo idea had been superceded by the game idea which had been superceded by the multimedia library, which had only one person working on it (me) and showed no signs of being useful for anything other than demonstrating library functions. Besides, DOS didn't look good anymore. Everyone was making games for Windows using DirectX now.

I've since given up on a career in multimedia. However, I strongly miss the thrill of that year. I didn't know what a hacker was, didn't care for a reputation and coded simply because I was inspired. And code I did. Like I never did before or have since.

1997 remains the best year I've ever had.

If you're interested in the demo scene, please visit the Hornet archives. You will need a version of MS-DOS older than 7.0 (like 6.22) and a sound card that is fully compatible with the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro (meaning no drivers required) to view most of these demos. There are a few good Windows demos too though, particularly by The Black Lotus.