A short history
About this textWriting something about myself? Something really personal? Nobody does that! - That's what I thought, till I saw Hetero's homepage at www.lkcc.org It was really exciting to read his version of how it all started. It's hard to get it together. So hard, it took me a week or more and it's far from being complete. But writing it was fun because it brought the memories back to live. So when it boils down to it, I can almost claim to have written this for myself...
Me & Computers
How it all began? I don't know. Hetero must have a pretty good memory to get it all together... Hmmm... let me concentrate... when did it all begin? I don't know for sure. I can remember some images: me as a child building a computer made of paper and cardboard, or passionately solving computer-like riddles in one of GDR's children's-magazines called FRÖSI. I was addicted to computers even before I'd ever seen a real one. Later on, the father of one of my closest school mates, Jochen Rode, gave a course in programming. I was at primary (or elementrary) grade so I guess it was about 1988 - one year before the wall came down. The computer was self-made, attached to a small TV-Set and with a keyboard made of about 40 switches (which were I believe meant for other purposes.). I think it had TINY BASIC. We were about 10 kids at Jochen's home and his father gave us tasks like writing "Zahlenraten" or stuff like this. We had to write the programs on paper first, then, in a group of two or three we could enter the program and test it. I don't think that it was possible to save. I can only remember, that Jochen and I always had to wash our hands, before we were allowed to do something on the computer.
Later, I can remember making a computer related "Wandzeitung" for school. Huge, clumsy letters drawn with a pen on blue chequered paper. It was a computer like font, just the way I thought computer things look like. Even later I attended holiday-courses at a Pionierhaus" at Malchower Weg. I am not sure how I got there, but since in GDR everything was linked in one way or another, let's imagine there was an invitation for all pupils at school. There were lots of courses: Electrotechnology, Chess, Chemistry, just everything. Even programming! Here I was...
Pionierhaus
...a long two storey building within a city area of gardens and family houses. 100 meters of grass behind the fence, a kindergarten to the right, same style but a smaller. You entered in the middle going into a long corridor. I remember it being dark, with red brick floor and dark green cupboards with glass doors exposing really old computer parts. I don't think that they ever changed the exhibition. At one end there was a smokey room for the teachers full with electrical equipment and computers. They had two computer rooms, one with new KC87-computers and one with Z1013. But that came later. First I had to take courses in electronics and programming pocket computers. And finally I could take a course in programming BASIC with the KC87. The course was held during summer holidays. Maybe over two weeks with 4 hours per day or more. I loved it. At the overhead projector stood Mr. Berg, a huge, heavy guy whom I always believed to be angry. He died just some months ago on stomach cancer.
During this course I met Andreas Bartusch. He later called himself BSW. We soon became close friends. Much later I joined his karate club for a year or two. I was very often at the "Pionierhaus". After a while a computer-club evolved each Thursday evening, where you could use the computers for whatever you wanted to. I played games, collected programs on my tapes, maybe I even learned a little bit. I soon met Mr. Freudenberg. He looked like the oldest man I'd ever seen and he was the best teacher you could imagine. I remember him taking voice-notes before each program on his tapes like "Dreieckssatz version zwei", and being a very strong smoker. Since he used to be a mathematics teacher, he always tried to make us write "useful" mathematical programs in BASIC. He was respected by everyone. He helped me a lot with school. Then we met Sven Simon Huth. This guy was a wizard! In a queer, shy way he sat at a computer somewhere in the corner of the room and just "did his stuff". First we noticed that the programs on his tapes where saved with "turbo"-speed. He showed us a cool copy program - "TURBO" - which could do such things. We couldn't even think of how this was possible! He told us that it was written in Assembler and there was some kind of magic in this word... We eagerly copied Turbo and loved it instantly. Soon it came out, that HE had written the Turbo... I can't describe our respect for him. If he said something, and this was not very often and in a shy, silent voice, it was just like words from inside the computer. He just knew everything. His BASIC became a strange mixture of ultra-long basic lines, where a new line-number was only inserted, if you need a GOTO to that line. The programs where full of calls right into the "BETRIEBSSYSTEM". I bought my own Betriebsystem-listing right after that. He, of course, seemed not to need it since he had all in his head. He had a few tapes full of every program that had ever been made for the KC87 and the tape-covers where written with pencil in a small and neat writing. I can remember that he had a "TONKOPFDREHER" attached to his shoulder bag with a fishing line. This was a small, self-made skewdriver you needed to adjust the tape tracking of the recorders. We didn't even know, that this was possible and Mr. Freudenberg was always a bit angry about it. I still played a lot but at the same time I started to programme. I took a course in assembler-programming with Mr. Berg. The course was held at Z1013 computers -- a construction set with a similar asm-instruction set as KC87. I didn't like this computer, maybe because it looked clumsy and self-made, but in fact it was pretty good. Now we wrote a lot of programs for the KC87. Not the slow and stupid BASIC-programs but Paint-programs and games. Sven brought a debugger called "deb" which could be loaded to different addresses in memory. You easily could write assembler (or machine-code since there where no labels or names but straight addresses) with it, and I started to write a version of "sokoban" which I had seen on a PC1715 with Jochen. Jochen's father was some kind of engineer and he always had the newest stuff at home. Sokoban worked and I loved to see others playing with it. It has a secret code to jump to the last level after that you saw a picture of ALF which I painted in the KC87 cursor-graphic with Andreas' PaintBox program. In sokoban there was a mistake in the keyboard - function of which some friends still make jokes about.
SOWAT
Sometime later we met Mr.Franze and Matthias Geißler (Mac). They just wrote a huge program called Karate which, as the first one, filled the complete 48Kb of the KC87. I can remember a thick folder full of drawn karate figures, jumping, kicking, moving and hitting. You could play karate in one or two player mode. It was really impressive. Mr.Franze was also a mathematics teacher but much younger than Mr.Freundenberg. He could do everything: playing keyboards, painting, programming and talking. I think, he too was a good teacher for me. While Franze seemed to be the man for layout, graphics, design and music, Mac was the programmer. He wasn't fixed on KC87 - he could also code assembler on Atari, ZX-Spectrum and Commodore. Later he wrote a Tetris clone at ZX-Spectrum and the pretty famous MacCopy on ZX-Spectrum. By this time our computer-club had a second room full of hackers with Commodores and Ataris. I didn't knew them and they where much older. They set up their equipment in a normal class room with lots or huge black&white tv-sets. This was really impressive, full of music and effects. I saw some intros and games but I can't remember it very well. This was another world. Not mine. Later I met some of them at the new location of the computer club in Ahrensfelde.
Elite
Someday we've got the idea of writing a Boulderdash clone. We called it "Elite" just like David Braben's game on ZX-Spectrum because we want it to be about getting money and buy new, stronger weapons. This one became a real huge project with lots of levels. I painted most graphics, designed some weapons and wrote most of the level-functions. BSW wrote most of the code and put it all together. Sven designed some really mean levels. They were so strange, that BSW and I lost a bet with him, that it wouldn`t be possible to solve them. We had to wait outside (so we could not see how he did it..) Then we had to run inside just to see him running into the exit: The time limit was hard -only 4 seconds left... He won a pack of ice cream... I later tried several times to adapt Elite on PC, last time as "!Dash" which reached a source-code size of several hundred kilobytes. But it was never finished.
LKCC
To start with it: It means "Last KC Club". We decided to give ourselves a name and wrote a small demo (or the other way round). The first members (as far as I can remember) were Queen (Sven, later Darkstar or Dasa), Andreas (BSW), Holger, Raffi, Mirco and me (pinky, bcc, extreme, zox, DrLazy and yes, I did change my name quite often...). I am not sure, whether this are all founding members. Later Mac and Ilja (Ira, Elias Arts, Motu) joined.
ZX-Spectrum
You might wonder, why it was called ELITE. I am not sure, whether I already had my ZX-Spectrum then. We loved "Elite". I lent my ZX-Spectrum to BSW and Sven so they could play it too. I bought the ZX-Spectrum because of Mac. He showed me a lot, but since I haven't got this ultra cool ISO-Rom and not enough experience, I played all the time, collected games and programs. And soon the "ULA burnt out" (That's the normal way a ZX-Spectrum dies). That was it. At the new computer club in Ahrensfelde I met "Redcrack", "mn" and some other ZX hackers. The club changed to there because Franze was teacher at the school next to the club. I don't know what happened to the Pionierhaus. The club was closed down and it was used for "Polytechnik"-courses for primary schools. Despite the name and whatever originally meant it to be used for by GDR's politicians, seeing it being closed down was one of my major experiences of the "Wende". Since now everybody complains about the lack of good programmers and the wasted spare time of youngsters, I am just wondering how stupid a government must be to waste such a thing. The name could have been changed but the concept was excellent. I don't believe, that a normal child will ever stop playing Nintento or Quake and learn BASIC or C++ if institutions like this aren't there to motivate.
PC
BSW bought an C64 and after that an Amiga. I never could understand this, because everyone bought a PC. Sven was the first one. And soon he started to know it all. His favorite programs where TASM, TDebugger, and THELP. He started cracking games and was pretty good at this. But since none of us had a modem most of his stuff only spread in Berlin. Later he collected his cracks in the legendary DSCC and started to write XOR, the program with the most weird and complicated interface ever. It had to be short (don't know why) and so the help was compressed into one(!) page completely filled with shortcuts and greets and infos and a small game if you chose the right screen-mode. Then I met Ilja, who lived quite near to Sven. (today, I am working together with both of them at echtzeit.) I started to write some intros and to paint with animator. Sven showed it to me, and I really loved it. It took us one week to understand how it was working. Some kind of recorded macro came with it, which ran much too fast on Sven's computer. I watched this record a hundred times. And soon started to paint logos for the others. (e.g. the dscc-logo).
Modem
I got my first modem from Brain'O'Neil. He was a trader and pretty strange. But it was an interesting new world in to which I was introduced by him. Soon I started to write some BBS-Intros and got accounts at most Berlin BBS. I started to write at CollectionTrainer (CT), later with the help of XerXes (Pil). I luckily met him during the Abitur. At this time, the world leading trainer group was CARDINALS led by the genius !Twin. I once got a message from him relating to CT. This was one of the best days in my life... We soon met face to face (at his home) and I think that he was surely one of the brightest and friendliest guys on earth. He introduced me to many others (ramses, synec, dream design, roy) and I visited the "Montagstreffen" near the FFH (an East Berlin Cinema) a few times. His family later moved outside of Berlin's telephone district and I never heard anything from him again.
Battle Maze
1992 Mac and I started to write on Battle Maze which was a run after new technologies and new 3d real-time rendering methods. We had an idea, what was it all about: Writing Atari's Cult-game "MidiMaze" for PC, but better and with more features. I played it twice at the FEZ Wuhlheide (some larger version of the Pionierhaus) and I really liked it. Mac did a lot of research (mostly with material he got from Tube - a pretty famous Hacker an PC-Programmer who coded the game "Atomio") and we finally decided to use an adapted Bresenhem-algorithm, similar of that in Wolfenstein 3D. We rewrote the whole program three times (pure ASM, BorlandC, WatCom) and always thought about new methods for further optimizing the program. It was really exciting to wander through your self-made cyberspace. After we added monsters and other players, we spent hours watching how the monsters fought against each other... Soon Mac added sound (a free MOD-Player). During all this time I was drawing textures (about 200) and playing around with 3dsR4. It was a really good time and we spent several weekends programming 16 hour a day (or at night). Finally I had do my military service and shortly after that, Mac was offered a job with Sican in Hannover.
Doom
During these years I met a lot of people. "Doom" came and with it can the time of monthly meetings where we collected our computers in Sven's, Peter's or my (parent's) flat. Hetero joined us. Dream Design came several times (I still believe Dream Design is one of the few born graphic geniuses. To see him doing 12 years in the army is one of the strangest, not understandable things, in the world...) We visited some other guys in West Berlin and met Digisnap, Electron (whom I only knew as the sysop of a Berlin BBS), "arcade" and a lot of others. Somehow Digisnap and I started talking and arguing about "dcc" being better than "vc" (both are filemanagers like Norton Commander under DOS). I'm a little bit proud that I showed him some of my asm-sources and he started learning with it. But with his incredible IQ of somewhere above 200 he soon started to get ahead, winning the "Party" and "Convention" Demo and Intro competitions. Leaving me behind as a small average programmer. Later he joined "Martix" and they wrote "Fulcrum". Today the third member of my appartment community is "Nero" (former member of "Ethics") and Matrix' graphics artist.
Army / UIP
I hate the army. Maybe there is no meaner thing, than stealing peoples' time. The army did just that. You could do nothing there, but drink, read or sleep. After three months I spent all of my money and a huge amount of my sister's to buy a laptop. I wrote some kind of "NortonCommander" to learn "c" (the "BattleMaze" parts programmed in C were all written by Mac..). Then I had the idea of writing an advanced version of "CheatEngine", a really bad shareware program. I started using the assembler GUI functions I wrote for BattleMaze. The time of "ColletionTrainer" was long past because good old "GameTools III" could not handle the protected mode of most new games and I couldn't find out how to solve this problem. Nobody uses exe-compression anymore and therefore it was a pretty obvious conclusion to "collect" file patches instead of memory-positions and interupt-hooks. Soon the 640x480 version in "C" was ready and I got a lot of help and testing by everybody. It was a great time and the number of patches collected in it soon exceeded the memoryspace I had originally planed. Strange situations occured like "B0ss" and "Ryder" of "acura" begging for more possible patches per volume. I tried several times to get it released by a major group like UCF. But this was never to happen... Much later, I planned a remake under windows with all new hip features: Internet, html, unlimited filesize etc.. With the new HiWiN-functions for minds+ this could be possible, but...
echtzeit
With the start of my studies, I started to work for echtzeit. There was a major split at Berlin's "Art+Com" (which resulted in founding echtzeit and cubus). Edouard Bannwart was dropped out of Art+Com and startet up a new company. He was looking for new, cheap programmers and modellers and there was "... an accountant who knew those enthsiasitc your people..." That's just how it all started. We were lucky and soon Sven, Ilja and I were working 20 hours a week. Less time to programme but enough money to study. Today, after four years of working there and surviving all other employees except the Boss himself, I think that this was the best thing that could happen to me. Working with SGIs and strange exciting programs nobody ever heard of, gave me a lot of self-confidence. (And I learned a lot, too...) However I might complain about echtzeit and the fact that things could (as always) be better, echtzeit gave me one important thing: The confidence in the future -- I will get a job, whatever I am doing now. It gave me an opportunity to experiment around and look for the way that suits me. Not everyone is so lucky.
ME & Architecture
When asked, why I did not study Computer Science, I answer "Don't know.... Maybe I thought I already knew it all." The truth is, I didn't know it all. I wasn't sure about everything. And you could study Computer Science at the TU-Berlin without the "ZVS" (the Germany way to get your place at an university) and a "numerous klausus". It was the LAST and secure choice. I was asked by a rather stupid mate in the army, if I am drawing so many strange buildings, why I don't study Architecture. He decided! He painted me in the right direction! It's ridiculous, but after he asked me, I was sure -- I really wanted to study architecture, but it was pretty tough to get in there because my final grade of 2.2 was far from being perfect. I was lucky again. I got in. And I needed more than four semesters to get to love it. I think architecture is a kind of play. It's stupid and it's mostly about selling yourself and your ideas. And it's about adapting the ideas of the person who pays you (or the one who is rating you). Somehow I am proud, when talking about me as an architect. But I deeply believe, that architecture as construed by Mies or Schinkel is dead. It has been converted into a muddy piece of shit including Bauherren, Building as cheaply as possible and as it is easiest with Nemetschek. It's about Traufhöhen and the Berliner Bauordnung. Architecture lives on as a dream sold by architects and dreamed by them. If they awoke they would wander around Friedrichstraße and Pariser Platz and puke out their lies. I never wanted to become a working Architect and luckily never had too. What remains is the best course of study you can think of. Designing buildings is almost the same as designing programs, games, Webpages - everthing! In most programs you can see, that the programmers only know HOW to programme. But they don't know WHAT they are doing.
And now?
1999. Ten years later. I have again started with programming. I nearly stopped, because I had the feeling that programmers and computer freaks are shy, pale, strange and lonely guys. I didn't want to be like this and just wasn't sure, if I chose the wrong hobby... Now I am not alone anymore. I have less time to spend with Computers (after echtzeit, study and sports) but I think that the produced code is better, call it: more sophisticated. I wonder, why programming isn't as hip as architecture. It's more thrilling, it's full of surprises, it's fast and it's the future. And it is being realized. In "Microslaves" Dennis Coupland thought about computer programs being the architecture of tomorrow. It's today's architecture! A door opening to the wrong side is as annoying as an unnecessary button or a programming error. Maybe computer freaks should start to wear black cloths just like architects do.
Women love that. ;-)
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Please do not bother me with stupid questions like where you can find the latest games or if i can send warez to you. It's also wasted time to ask me why certain ripped programs do not work on your computer. I am not involved in this kind of trading, supplying or cracking scene and i dont want to get in there. I cant and i dont want to answer such questions. Mails concerning these topics will be deleted.
Think about the idea to buy originals since software developers should also get money for their work, same as the motivation to continue developing good software.
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