I will probably remember these call-names forever as they were the initial guiding lights of my developer career.
Somewhere around 1994 our school received the first 386 computer. It had also a SoundBlaster Vibra card. It was a fantastic machine compared to the old monochrome 86 and 286 machines we had in the lab. In order to test the machine we decided to play some games or install Windows... In the end somebody remembered that he has something extraordinary that runs only on 386 machines. It was Future's Crew Second Reality demo. Unzipped the two floppy archive. Started it. Watched it to the end. We were speechless. We watched it again. And then again. And again. It was clearly addictive for us. We wanted to do the same tricks as PSI, Trug or Wildfire.
Up to that point I was not much interested in programming. Although I was learning algorithms I didn't had any practical use for them. Second Reality changed that. It was clear that if we wanted to do something similar to what Future Crew did we had to learn. In 1994 obtaining documentation was quite hard. There was no internet available for us, no access for BBS or similar sources. The only way to get some info was from older friends that were already at the university and had access to information. I collected dozens of disks with text files about assembly language,VGA graphics, protected mode, interrupts, algorithms. It was the moment I started to understand algorithms - Bresenham's Line algorithm was one of the revelations. Then slowly, in about one year, my colleagues were able to replicate most of the things we have seen in the demo. It was a great achievement for us as we did not reverse engineered the code but created a similar demo using from scratch implementations. As the 386 machine was hard to reach the demo worked reasonable well on 286 processors.
I learned a lot in that year. From programming to system architecture, from peripheral handling, low level programming and basic DSP to objects and data structures. I learnt advanced algebra because I needed it for the code and 3D stuff and improved my physics due to the fact I had to understand also the internals of particle systems. It was probably the year in which I learnt the most in the software field. The knowledge gained then proved to be useful for many years as it eased my CS studies a lot.
Again I have to thank PSI, Trug and Wildfire for opening up a world of endless choices and possibilities! I am still impressed today of Second Reality as it continues to be stunning from every possible aspect graphics, sound code. It seems that others also consider it a marvel, the demo was included in Slasdot's top 10 hacks of all time. I learnt that if you have a goal and you are surrounded by smart colleagues (Dan, Vale, Cipi, Raul, Adi, Robi) things become possible and, through percolation, unexpected, marvelous results appear.
Somewhere around 1994 our school received the first 386 computer. It had also a SoundBlaster Vibra card. It was a fantastic machine compared to the old monochrome 86 and 286 machines we had in the lab. In order to test the machine we decided to play some games or install Windows... In the end somebody remembered that he has something extraordinary that runs only on 386 machines. It was Future's Crew Second Reality demo. Unzipped the two floppy archive. Started it. Watched it to the end. We were speechless. We watched it again. And then again. And again. It was clearly addictive for us. We wanted to do the same tricks as PSI, Trug or Wildfire.
Up to that point I was not much interested in programming. Although I was learning algorithms I didn't had any practical use for them. Second Reality changed that. It was clear that if we wanted to do something similar to what Future Crew did we had to learn. In 1994 obtaining documentation was quite hard. There was no internet available for us, no access for BBS or similar sources. The only way to get some info was from older friends that were already at the university and had access to information. I collected dozens of disks with text files about assembly language,VGA graphics, protected mode, interrupts, algorithms. It was the moment I started to understand algorithms - Bresenham's Line algorithm was one of the revelations. Then slowly, in about one year, my colleagues were able to replicate most of the things we have seen in the demo. It was a great achievement for us as we did not reverse engineered the code but created a similar demo using from scratch implementations. As the 386 machine was hard to reach the demo worked reasonable well on 286 processors.
I learned a lot in that year. From programming to system architecture, from peripheral handling, low level programming and basic DSP to objects and data structures. I learnt advanced algebra because I needed it for the code and 3D stuff and improved my physics due to the fact I had to understand also the internals of particle systems. It was probably the year in which I learnt the most in the software field. The knowledge gained then proved to be useful for many years as it eased my CS studies a lot.
Again I have to thank PSI, Trug and Wildfire for opening up a world of endless choices and possibilities! I am still impressed today of Second Reality as it continues to be stunning from every possible aspect graphics, sound code. It seems that others also consider it a marvel, the demo was included in Slasdot's top 10 hacks of all time. I learnt that if you have a goal and you are surrounded by smart colleagues (Dan, Vale, Cipi, Raul, Adi, Robi) things become possible and, through percolation, unexpected, marvelous results appear.
