Several demos are behind the mechanic of the ‘puzzler’

Coder.
Amicom joined SPREADPOINT in 1989 together with Depeche. He was active as coder of very different things from MMU tools to demos. What he liked best was to explore and develop new programming tricks that could be used in demos and other places.

Data
Born 1968, grown up and living in Switzerland.
Todays occupation: finishing studies (natural science), running an internet company togehter with other ex-amiga freaks.

Work
Demos: Lissa, Platin3D, Small.
Intros: Giana Sisters (trained by Depeche), Amegas (trained by Depeche).
Utilities: Blitter-Copy, List Manager, MMU expert, AFS File Scrambler, SPlay soundtracker player.
Other stuff: Atom Demo (unfinished), Platon's Polyhedra (unfinished), revival of HQC demos, GigaMem (a virtual memory extension to AmigaDOS), some work in TypeSmith (a outline font editor).

Music
Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, Simple Minds, Billy Idol, Pink Floyd, Pet Shop Boys, OMD, ...

Interesting piece, because. you have to move around with an avatar to get to the demos. so their is a gamemechanic (puzzle) to open the subdemos!

Question: When this demo was created?

Den Crackern ging es selbstverständlich auch darum, bekannt zu werden. Sie versuchten symbolisches Kapital anzuhäufen. Man kann ihre Motivation und ihre Aneignungsweise durchaus mit derjenigen der Graffiti-Sprayer jener Jahre vergleichen, die mittels “taggen” ihres Künstler- und Gruppen Namens auf leeren Flächen der Stadt versuchten, Aufmerksamkeit zu erreichen – zum Beispiel GEN im Zürich der 80er Jahre. Getting Fame oder Getting Up war die Losung.

Aus den anfänglichen kurzen Bemerkungen als Text wurden immer komplexere eigenständige Vorspänne – die sogenannten Intros. Hier zeigten die Crackers mit der Message ihres Namens, die nicht zuletzt als Botschaften an die Adresse anderer Cracker Gruppen dienten, ihr Ganzes Können. Dabei versuchten sie alles aus diesen Computern herauszuholen. Diese Intros waren eine Art Graffiti auf den blanken Oberflächen der Games jener Zeit. Die Intros unterstanden nicht den Gesetzmäßigkeiten des Game Designs. Die Spielmechaniken spielten keine Rolle und mussten nicht verändert werden. Es ging lediglich um die Titel- und Credit Sequenzen der Spiele. Es ging um einen visuellen Auftritt, der auffallen sollte. Die Intros mussten gut aussehen und einen Wow-Effekt haben. Mit dem Einbezug von Musik und Animation wurde es aber bald auch wichtig, spezielleres Wissen zu erarbeiten. Die Cracker Gruppen begannen Arbeitsteilung einzuführen mit Programmierern, Grafikern und Musikern.

Aus diesen Intros, die in bestehende Spiele eingefügt wurden, entstand später eine ganz eigene Szene, die Demoszene. Und so kommt es, dass sich im Umfeld der meisten Schweizer Cracker und frühen Game Devs auch immer Demos finden. Diese Szene ist noch immer aktiv und dokumentiert sich bis heute selbst. Man findet fast alles aus den letzten 40 Jahren auf der Website POUET (2000) sowie in spezialisierten Datenbanken. Einige der Entwickler updaten ihre virtuellen Echtzeit Welten bis heute aber auch direkt selbst.

Abbildung 14: Cracks und Demos aus den Jahren 1983 – 1988 werden archiviert und öffentlich zugänglich gemacht über die Website der Swiss Cracking Association SCA (2018).Abbildung 15: Aus dem Repertoire des Crackers Hcc: Solomon’s Key Cracktro, Atari ST (1987).
 

Demo coder, known for cool demos and trainers.
Depeche jonied Spreadponit in 1989. He mysteriously left SP in 1990 and broke up alomst all contact. He then went over to DefJam but not very much later stopped his Amiga activity. Depeche was so fond of language games that he once bought a Langenscheid's dictionary of slang-English!

Data 
Born 1972, grown up and living in Switzerland
Todays occupation: finishing studies (comp. sci)

Work
Demos: Wooow, Scrapheap, Empire, Power!, HI5 and more
Trainers: a whole lot...
Sound: some crazy mixes
Tools: a disk copier in a bootblock, TLB-Utilitydisk, more

Hobbies
old days: being creative, being cool, speaking cool, cool places, cool clothes, cool people, arcade games, pinball machines
today: unknown.

Music
DM, Art of Noise, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Yello, LL cool J, Derek B, De la soul, ...

Games working with Products like Cracks, Games, Demos.

Mechanics: Faster, better in the most of the time groups against other groups for symbolic or community capital. 

Like Cracking, Demoscene

Escape Copy-Party 1989 was held in at the Schützen Haus in Villmergen, Switzerland for the Amiga scene. About 120 people attended, and 10 demos were released. Escape helped organize another Swiss party, this time together with Spreadpoint, in october. Among the groups that visited this party were Double Density Crew, The Supervisors, Piranhas, Amitech, Clan, Space Coloss, Silver Hawks, Slime Byte, and many more. During or immediately after this party, Atrix and Senses merged into the new group Setrox.

Mentioned briefly in the news section of Cracker Journal 12 (january 1989), "Escape Copy-Party was on 28 29 January 1989 in Switzerland.". A party report followed in Cracker Journal 13 (march 1989).

Hardware
- C64 consolen basis, erinnert mehr an eine Console als an einen Computer (Sprite, Hardwarescrolling, Music).
- SID wirklich witzig

VisualDisplay
Unmöglich viele Modis: High res. Multicolor > Programmierung schwierig. Positiv: Kombinierbar
- Beschränkte 16 Farben > Schwierig etwa eigenes zu machen. 
- Strahlende Farben fehlen.

Music
- Music Coding
- SID wirklich interessante Stücke. 

Tools
- Damals Paintingprogramme? > Öfter bessere Computer genutzt wie Amiga/PC (Compiling)

Coding
- Schwierig reinzukommen, sogar schwieriger als Atari2600
- Entwicklung über Jahre
- Basic embedded .-(
- Woher kam das Wissen? Die Software? (Magazine?)
- Öfter bessere Computer genutzt wie Amiga/PC (Compiling)
Gamecoding
- Ohne Tricks (Sprite Multplexer 8 Sprites viele Spiele nicht denkbar) ähnlich wie beim Atari 2600. Tricks

Beschränkung
- Beschränkung bei Shootemups am Schwierigsten bei allen anderen Genres eher möglich mit 8 Sprite durchzukommen.

Community
- Identitätsstiftend aber warum? Einfach übers gemeinsame Spielen?
- Bis heute ungebrochen. Aber mehrheitlich Spieler? Demoszener? 

Heute

Gesamte Entwicklung auf einmal da, keine allmähliche Steigerung/Entwicklung über 10 Jahre
Selbst heute, einige Tutorials aber kein Gametemplate. Viel bis heute unterschiedliche Nutzung: Vorallem game und demoscene. 
> Anwendersoftware fast nicht dokumentiert. 
> Neue Games, demos > Anwendersoftware?

It is the cathode ray. 
and it never goes up - only in the demos.

it is a technical visual thing about power and control! 

The swiss gamedesign was influenced and even founded by the cracker scene coming from the C64 to Amiga and the other tree was the Atari ST. Around 25 own Games and Ports were created and published from 1985-1997. There was even an own publisher Linel. 

Preferred size rules:

_ Moment you don't have enought bytes
_ Surprise
_ Code golfing stage 
_ Experimenting
_ Restrictions
_ Battle
_ Prototyping
_ Solve the puzzle
_ Different solutions > new ideas > new concept> new other demos > great feeling

Fresh was founded April 22, 1989 on the Crazy & RCS Party 1989 by Iceman/ISI Soft, Graphics-Boy, Project B, Shake (subgroup) and Welfare Software Boys (subgroup). 2 months later Krush joined in as main cracker. The first Fresh Intro gained a lot of attaention in the Swiss scene: it was coded Mat and the music was exclusively composed by Tim of Modern Arts, one of the most progressive demo groups back then.

After the Crazy Stardom Copy-Party 1989 (August) in Le Locle the 2 Swiss demogroups Future Vision Switzerland and Trap joined Fresh. 

Mainly in 1990, a war with Computer Freaks Association was ongoing. Both groups were competing for being Switzerland's #1. Computer Freaks Association released a small anti-demo called Fresh on Top. The war was officially ended at the Swiss Pirates Reunion 2002 (nowadays there are many friendship boundaries between the former 2 opponents).

Was in co-op with Century for short while in February/March 90. The co-op was stopped due to a lack of Century cracks.

After the Fresh Party 1990 (April) Krush, Ogygene and Mirage left to built up a new Swiss group together with The Sexton/G*P called Abstract, which later then joined forces with the ashes from the Swiss demogroup Future Concepts and renamed into Crusade.

Also in April 1990 a small but neat Austrian section was built by Awesome & Beast. They have produced some one file demos and due to the good connections to Lotus, Awesome has supplied a couple of hot originals. 

In May 1990 some Fresh members have been working on a project to join forces with The Ancient Temple. Both group got to know eachother at the Fresh Party 1990. Project names were SAPPHIRE or LIFE IS A BEACH. There was no agreement on the name, so the project never was realised. 

In June/July 1990 a German section in Cologne was built around Spy, Trax & Scoundrel. After their lame release Lost in Time , they have been kicked out.

Was in co-op with Holocaust from August 1990 to October 1990. The coop started with Fresh's first release of Back to the Future II 5. The co-op later was stopped due to a lack of Fresh cracks in that period (main cracker Graphics Boy had left the group to join Crazy).

Fresh died in late 1990 when Freestyle and Dave joined Talent.

The demoscene was first a spin-off the crackers and became an own culture with festivals, ‘jams’ and contests. Often there are old computers embeded. 

All in one. Democollection - show all possible things in one demo. also often wirh story telling aspects - visual narrative or a classic story.

What is possible on one disc. More longterm motivation, more content needed.

Own type/textsorte.

CODE > Graphics (Effects), Sound, SizeCoding > Effect, Synaesthesy  (Creativity Process)
Community > Concurrency > Metagame > Scene

Make games copyable. Some cracker groups where in the tradition of information freedom, others learned from cracking software creating software, others had fun, others were in a sport ‘who is first’ and of course also others gained money. 

Why switzerland? and not us? The rumor is: There was no law in switzerland against cracking.