Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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� <<< THE FUTURE CREW INFORMATION PACKAGE >>> �
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� Version 1.7 �
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� 06-DEC-1994 �
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� This file contains general information about the Future �
� Crew and our demos. It also includes frequently asked �
� questions we often receive by mail and instructions on �
� how to contact us best. Please read this info-file before �
� contacting us. �
� �
� We will update this file as things change, and if the �
� above date is rather old, you can get the most recent �
� version of this file either by E-Mail from Internet or �
� from our distribution sites. �
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� CONTENTS �
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1: Opening words
2: Commercial Productions
3: Disclaimer, The Distribution and Use of Our Demos
4: The Current Memberstatus
5: List of all Future Crew releases
6: How to Contact Future Crew
7: Frequently Asked Questions
8: International Demo Competitions
9: The History of The Future Crew
10: Final Words
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� 1: OPENING WORDS �
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� 2: COMMERCIAL PRODUCTIONS �
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If you find our demos and programs interesting and would like
us to make a presentation for your company, do not hesitate to
contact us.
Our resources are limited and we choose the projects we make with
care, but especially our musicians and graphic artists are always
looking for new projects.
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� 3: DISCLAIMER, THE DISTRIBUTION AND USE OF OUR DEMOS �
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All our demos and programs, except the ones which we have created
for different companies, are freeware.
This means that you can copy and distribute them freely as long
as you make no modifications to them. Also, no money can be charged
for our products. This means that you can not sell these products
without our permission. However a small compensation for copying/
spreading them is acceptable.
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� 4: THE CURRENT MEMBERSTATUS �
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FC Internet Division:
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� 5: LIST OF ALL FUTURE CREW RELEASES �
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You SHOULD be able to find all of the above from our Distribution Sites.
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� 6: HOW TO CONTACT THE FUTURE CREW �
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NOTE! OUR BBS NUMBER HAS CHANGED! The new number is a 11-node
ringdown. Also, StarPort can now be accessed internationally via
internet.
ALSO, SNAIL-MAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED!
To get our demos you can call our many BBSes around the world.
You can find the list of these BBSes in the FCSITE textfile.
Also, very good anonymous ftp demo sites (in addition to
ftp.mpoli.fi) are ftp.uwp.edu and ftp.eng.ufl.edu. Our demos
can be found in the directory /pub/msdos/demos/groups/future.crew.
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� 7: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE CREW �
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Q: What programming books would you recommend to learn assembler and VGA?
A: This is a hard question, and a general answer is, that any book will do.
You can get the basics from a book and books are a great reference,
but when it comes to creating something new, you can't just read it
from a book. We have all learnt to code the hard way (a lot of
miscellaneous books and a lot of experimenting). Anyway, here are
some of the books we often find handy (there are undoubtably newer
prints, so check them out):
Q: I'm a beginner programmer. I wonder if you could help me learn demo coding?
A: Unfortunately our time does not allow that. If we would help others, we
couldn't get anything done. We have released a few source codes of our
productions, look for them in the releases-list.
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� 8: INTERNATIONAL DEMO COMPETITIONS �
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For those who have no idea what the above are, I will explain.
Demo competitions (= parties) are international events where
the demo scene people go to meet each other and to compete in
the many competitions that are being held. These competitions
(= compos) are the demo, intro (= a demo sized under 64kb),
music and graphics. There are often different compos for different
machines (PC, Amiga, and C-64). There are also prizes in
each compo (cash or computer hardware & software). The cash prizes
are usually the money people pay as the entrance fee (usually
about $20-30 US/person) and the possible computer hardware & software
has usually been sponsored by various computer companies. All
contributions are being experienced on a big screen (many meters
wide) and with the aid of a powerful audio system. After this all
the people or a selected jury vote and decide which contributions
are the best. After this the prizes are being given out and the
party is over. In the process people of course get to know each
other better and exchange new ideas.
Parties usually last for three days (a weekend) and are usually
organized by bigger demo groups.
There are a few big demo parties being held annually in Europe,
The Party in Denmark at Christmas-time and Assembly in Finland
in the end of Summer.
A few months before the party, the organizing demo groups usually
release special invitation intros to advertise their parties.
At Assembly'94 were 4kb intro, 64kb intro, PC demo, graphics and music
competitions. The quality was good in all competitions, especially
in 4kb intro competition, organized for the first time.
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� 9: THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FUTURE CREW �
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- 1986-1987 -
Future Crew (FC) was founded in the year 1986 on the C-64. And only one
member has been in the group for the whole time - Psi. FC did two
demos on the C-64 before moving into the PC scene in the year 1988.
- 1988 -
FC's first PC demo was a EGA sinus -scroller called GR8. At that time
the members were HAL, JPM, SS (Psi) and SIDDER. And DARK POWER
was FC's BBS.
- 1989 -
Then there came YO! which was quite popular for a while. It used one of
the VGA's textmodes and included 'nice' PC-speaker music. It had
many scrollers, a sinusing YO!-logo, a little bouncing ball and
a 2D-starfield. At this time ICE joined and so FC
had another BBS - SILICON DRAGON.
- 1990 -
In the year 1990 there was only one demo release from us, the Slideshow I.
It was the first PC demo which included 4 voice SoundBlaster music. It
didn't include any other special code for it was a VGA picture slideshow.
And at this time there were a lot of members in FC: Psi, ICE, HAL, JPM,
SID, BIG, DAC, MAC and SEBU.
Only shortly after Slideshow I, Psi released his Scream Tracker 2.0
- a 4 voice music editing program inspired by the Amiga SoundTracker.
ST 2.0 was a real success.
- 1991 -
In summer 1991, FC released a demo called Mental Surgery. It had a big
scroller on the top of the screen, 3D-starfield, a nice writer, music
scopes and of course 4 voice SoundBlaster music. This was the last FC
demo that worked on a 286 machine. At this time the members were: Psi,
ICE, Dr.Venkman and Purple Motion. Little after this I (GORE) joined FC
and ICE lost the interest to demos and left FC along with his BBS.
- 1992 -
So, FC lived quietly for about half a year. But when the year 1992
came Trug, Pixel, Skaven and Abyss joined FC. And as Abyss joined, FC
had a BBS again, called StarPort. So, in the beginning of the year
1992 FC had the following members:
Psi - Code
Trug - Code
GORE - Organizing
Pixel - GFX
Abyss - BBS Support
Skaven - Music & GFX
Purple Motion - Music
It was at this time that we had begun making UNREAL. Our first plan was to
release it at MEGA-Leif Convention - An Atari ST/PC party held in Uppsala,
Sweden. But about a month before MEGA-Leif, MeeGosh/Rebels (Amiga) called
me and told me about ASSEMBLY'92 and that it would be cool to have also the
PC scene there. So, he asked us to do an invitation intro for the PC scene
about this mega-event. We agreed and so, UNREAL was put to rest as Psi got
the idea of making something different - namely the Fishtro. It took us
about two weeks to create Fishtro from nothing, but when we went to MEGA-Leif
Convention, we still had a few little bugs in it and therefore we couldn't
release it until a week after MEGA-Leif.
After we came back from MEGA-Leif, we started on making Unreal again in
order to get it finished for Assembly'92.
In July'92 came Assembly'92, and we won the demo competition with Unreal.
Around 1000 people attended this party, which wasn't so bad as it was being
held for the first time. The total amount of PC people was 300.
After this we were contacted by the organizers of a big Amiga/C64/PC party,
called The Party 1992. They asked us to organize the PC demo compo there and
to make an Invitation Intro for it's PC side.
At that time we had the following members: Psi, Trug, Wildfire, Pixel,
Purple Motion, Skaven, Abyss and GORE.
The Party 1992 Invitation Intro was mostly coded by Psi and WildFire.
WildFire was our new coder who joined us in autumn 1992. He had before been
active on the Atari ST scene.
Then it was the time for another big demo. The making of Panic began.
It was the normal process of making demos with blood and sweat and annoying
deadlines. Wildfire was the one to assemble the demo together, but lots of
code was also done by Psi and Trug.
Then it was the time for The Party 1992. As we thought that it would be
really nice to get as many people as possible to The Party as cheaply as
possible, we decided to organize a bustrip there with the Amiga people.
So we managed to load two buses full of computer freaks and start our trip
to The Party.
At that time The Party 1992 was the biggest demo party ever. There were
about 2500 computer freaks of which around 300 were PC dudes.
There we entered the demo compo with Panic, and to our surprise we came
second. Witan's Facts of Life had won the demo compo. We were quite
disappointed by this, because there was absolutely no voting. The voting
system on Amiga just didn't work. And then some Amiga organizer just asked
the last remaining PC organizer (A member of Danish Elite) "What do you
think were the best PC demos?" without telling him that these were going
to be the official results. And without thinking the PC organizer just
said "Witan's, FC's and Sonic's".
However, The Party 1992 was a nice party.
- 1993 -
After The Party 1992 we lived quietly for awhile. The only big change was
that Marvel (formerly in Sonic Amiga) joined us. So we now had two GFX
artists. Then we began thinking of making a diskmag (Worldcharts). At first
nobody really wanted to code it, so we thought that we would make it as a
co-operation with Stone (a finnish demogroup). But after some co-operation
trouble we began making it 100% by ourselves. Only the first issue was
released. Then we decided to stop making it, for we had other more important
projects to attend to.
Then it was the time for Assembly'93. Once again we were the PC organizers
and we made an invitation intro about it.
Assembly'93 was the biggest summer demo party ever. There were about 1500
people on the party place of which around 550 were PC demo freaks. Asm'93
was also a big advancement on the PC side. For the first time we also had
an intro, a music (4 channel and multichannel) and a graphics competition.
Second Reality was also first presented at Assembly'93.
Next was The Party 1993 (also known as The Party 3), and all we can say is
that it wasn't such a good party as it could have been. This was NOT the
fault of the PC organizing group Access Denied, but instead it seemed that
the Amiga organizers had underestimated the PC side and thus treated the PC
side somewhat unfairly. Already there is some talk about organizing a
PC-only party for X-mas'94.
Anyway, we released the GUS version of our old Assembly'92 winner demo
Unreal, and Purple Motion's musicdisk called Journey (which also includes
the MDP - our MOD/S3M player for GUS/SB/SBPro).
- 1994 -
Future Crew is now almost 8 years old. We had big plans for this year,
both in the demo scene and in the commercial market. We organized
Assembly '94 with Accession, Sonic PC, Virtual Dreams and The Movement.
It was a big party, with about 3000 visitors. It was held on August 5th-
7th in the center of Helsinki (the capital city of Finland). Our major
release this year has been the long-awaited Scream Tracker 3, a project
which has been in the making for over 2 years.
Next, FC will go traditionally to The Party '94, held again in Herning,
Denmark, just after Christmas.
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�10: FINAL WORDS �
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