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Every year when Easter comes they win the annual Amiga demo competition at the Breakpoint 2005 demo | | The Amiga demo "Ocean Machine" by The Black Lotus won the annual demo competition at the Breakpoint demo party. |
party. In 2005 it was their production called "Ocean Machine", which ranked 1st. It’s worth that placement, because nearly no other group knows how to arrange scenes and effects in such a perfect looking way and style. TBL knows how to bring the outdated AGA graphic chipset and old 68060 CPU’s from Motorola to their limits. Also their demos always feature a brilliant soundtrack which is perfectly synced to the effects. Lars "Ghandy" Sobiraj spoke with Kalms/TBL about the making of "Ocean Machine". --=The Making of Ocean Machine=-- No matter if you like it or not. It’s somehow like a tradition. Each year the top of the notch from the European demosceners meet in Bingen/Germany while the rest of the world searches for big, colourful eggs made of chocolate - and each year The Black Lotus wins the Amiga demo competition! That’s how it is, simple as that. Together with their coding machine, Kalms of TBL we had a closer look behind the curtain. Ghandy: Please tell me how the management tool exactly did help you with doing the demo. Didn't it otherwise kill the spontaneity and part of the fun doing it as it all looks so much of profession and not of a hobby anymore. Kalms: Successful use of a project management tool requires understanding of some of the differences between a demo project and a professional software project:  | | This project management tool helped TBL to coordinate the work on their demo. |
1) People who work on a demo do so in their spare time. Thus, they have far less than 40 hours per week to dedicate to the demo, and they work in bursts (one week a person might spend three evenings on the demo, next week zero evenings). 2) People work voluntarily on a demo. A schedule could never be "enforced" upon someone unwilling. 3) What goes into the final product is determined by the people who make the demo, not by some external customer. |
