Interviews

H)
Please introduce yourself to our readers.

B)
Hi there! My real name is Balazs Farkas, and I was born on 1975 in Budapest, Hungary. I got a mother a brother and a girlfriend. I was mainly infected with the computers by my family, as my mother was a computer operator in the late of 70s and I had to spend a lot of time with her at the workplace. I was amazed by the rooms with full of computers, many cute lights, circling    
tapes and interesting things on them.  My stepfather also was a programmer, so it was a straight way for me to entertain myself with computers.


H)
As most know, you became famous since you are a part of Graffity. Could you describe your scene career?

B)
Well my REAL scene career started very late in 1989 when I began the secondary school, and there we formed with an other dude a group called Tomcat. It wasn't a worldwide famous group as it was our first. When we came out with nice and decent stuffs, the bigger groups took some look on us, and the result was that Gentlemen invited us to join. Meanwhile I met with
other cool guys like Jay from Quality and the whole Trays factories. From these four groups we formed Graffity. Before my scene career, I was programming low quality demos, intros and even games. I'm programming in assembly language since 1987.

H)
What do you think of today's Hungarian scene compared to the one that existed a few years ago?                 

B)
My answer probably will be similar to other persons' one. It is unable to compare it with the old times, and it is not only with the Hungarian scene. The more abilities of higher performance-computers took a lot of 64 coders and it's also a sad fact that the C64 is more than 14.

The number of newly explorable tricks is nearly reduced to zero, and a good programmer won't stop getting new experiences. They move to other computers, even if they have to say good bye to scene life. We in Hungary also had a very productive and competitive scene around 1990. I think we simply became too old for being active, or we just don't care about watching these children groups learning to code. This modern (?) information highway gave the last punch of the old scene, since its exists people cannot appreciate any stuffs, except for the real top productions. Anybody can get anything, they don't need to watch the post box for a sending so no excited stuff-hunting, and also  no continuous supply of stuffs.

                                                                        

H)
You're the person behind the famous music editor called Demo Music Creator. Could you please let us know when did you start to program the editor and the player? Can we expect a new version?

B)
This program is cannot be interpreted as a separate work of mine. There is my knowledge in it, and truly mirrors my skills and experiences from the very beginning. I made my first player (If we could call it player) in '87 using packed musical data of $d400-01 from old games. Then my theory got slowly improved until it's got fame under the DMC name. By the way the DMC V2-4 is made in 1991, and DMC V5 in 1992. There is also a V6 but it is only for internal usage. I am still feeding myself from the things I learned from 64, and if you even thought I was inactive, I've coded several music players for Sega Genesis, Snes, on AdLib and AWE32 with editor, too. I have to apologize guys for not coming up with new DMC versions anymore, maybe (!) we'll spread the official version of DMC V5.1, but if you want to use my new routines, then you have  to catch them on the PC.

H)
It's common knowledge that the DMC 5.0 has been stolen. Could you explain the circumstances?

B)
Grrr. I don't like to talk about this, it happened, so not too much to talk about it. When I've done the 5.0, I planned to use it only by real musicians and not beginners, so I first spread it in The Imperium Arts. Then I met a dude who said that he has got the version 5. I got upset because he was very happy about it. Then Syndrom told me that somebody has stolen it from his place (I don't  tell names), and I asked Matthias to spread then and not letting lamers  being proud of themself having it. That's all. So there isn't any official Graffity release of DMC 5.

H)
What do you think of today's musicians?

B)
It's a hard question for me, as I don't know any new musicians. There could be good ones and bad ones as well. Anyway I wasn't\ satisfied with a lot of musicians (even with myself), and I was often disappointed by giving them the easiest opportunity


H)
Graffity was famous for hard coded demos combined with nice design. Do you think Graffity can cope with today's standard?

B)
Yes certainly, but Graffity don't feel any kind of intention to it! We don't support running super made cheated calculations, which would need more higher performance, or converting graphics from other computers. The time  has run over old fashioned demos. About design, we'll surely could make high quality, but coding hard, limits  the outfit! And we set for the code the highest priority...

H)
It's rumoured that you have a new demo in the making. Who's working on it actually, and what can we expect?                                            

B)
Yes, it is true. It would be nice to finish our JustinBlue what we coded in the year 1993, so If it would be three years earlier, you'll see another masterpiece. We, many times, lost the mood to complete it when our routines were coded by Cheesion, and Grabowsky in 1993, some new will be ready by two of our new coders Clarence and Ollie.. Graphics by CyborTech and music by me. We just have to put it together...


H)
It's a pretty good thing for the legal market that you're back in the scene. But for how long do you plan to stay?

B)
I'm very happy to hear about that. If I stay for longer, I will only make music, but at the moment can't foresee I'll have much and more other things to do for keeping my life running. By the way I want to check the scene activity until it's exists...


H)
Thanks for you time, dude! At last I want to give you the opportunity to greet some of your friends you want.

B)
Any time, pal. I send my greetings to all of the C-64

Graffity and to you! Peace to all!