Hello Woober, could you please do a small introduction of yourself to our readers?
Hi, back in the good old Amiga days in the 90's I was known as Woober, I was a musician and ascii artist in Saints, Giants, Darkage and Arcade + many other scene groups. I was also a sysop with my own BBS called Eternity for several years. I spent most of my spare time doing ascii, music and sysop-ing, but I was also a trader, editor, writer, organizer, cracker and coder. I probably did whatever I could do on the Amiga
.
When did you get interested in computers, and what was your first computer?
My main interest in computers started on my first computer which was an Dragon 64 in the mid 80's, with a cassette player to load in games/software. After a short while I got a Commodore 64, and after playing games for a short while I started to do some programming in basic, and saw that you could create something on these computers, this opened up a lot of possibilities to be creative. I was then hooked by these possibilities.
What Amiga(s) did you have in the past, and if you remember, what were the(ir) configuration(s)?
My first Amiga was an A500, with only 512kb of Ram. Then I got an Amiga 1200, with 40MB harddrive, that felt like endless storage space back then, as things didn't take up that much space. Later on I got an Amiga 4000 with 060 processor and 128MB Ram I think it was. When I ran my BBS I had around 800GB of storage space, which was later upgraded to a FTP server using Linux/Debian and 8TB of storage.
Do you still have any Amiga(s) today or did you get rid of them?
I do not own any Amiga's anymore, I sold my Amiga in 2000, which had sadly broken down.
Can you tell us how you got involved with the demoscene?
I was early on fascinated by intros and demos from the demoscene, so I always wanted to be a part of that scene. I think it was mainly around 1993-1994 that I finally got into the demoscene for real, and I kept doing scene stuff until 1999, that`s when my Amiga broke down. That was the last time I ever had an Amiga.
Could you tell us a bit about the demos you worked on, and which production you feel was the best one overall?
I've been involved in many productions, I was quite active as an editor in a diskmag called Showtime, and did several ascii collections, which i'm very proud of. I also made music to one of the last doc disks from LSD (Light Speed Distribution), but I also did some music for game trainers and several music disks. Its hard to remember all the productions i've been part of, there are so many.
Is there any production you wish you had not worked on, or perhaps there is a production you wish had turned out differently?
Nothing I can think of really, it was all about fun and learning new things back then. Its quite amusing to listen to some of the music I made, or find releases I was part of these days. Don`t regret anything.
Was there any music you created back then that you were really satisfied with, and can even look back upon now and be proud of?
My competition tune for The Gathering 1999, which was a techno version of the classic song from "Flåklypa". I'm still very proud of that tune today, which took me almost a year to finish, even though the samples sucks
Were there any musicians at the time, either demosceners or just musicians in general, that you either looked up to or felt inspired you to create your own music?
I always looked up to musicians like 4mat, Virgill, Moby, Jester and E-Max in the demoscene.
Could you tell us a bit about the equipment/application(s) you used to create music back then?
I didn't have much music equipment, I basically used Protracker and later on Digibooster (with 8 channels) to track all my music. I had some sample equipment, but I never got good at catching sounds. It was mainly for fun indeed.
Can you tell us if you remember, what you considered the best Amiga demos back when you were active?
Nexus 7 by Andromeda is one of the best demos by far, in my opinion. Me and a friend was together at The Party 4 in Denmark, the last big demo party in 1994, where all the best people from the demoscene was gathering and competing. Of course there are several more, but that`s what pops up in my head today.
Are you still making music today? If yes, could you please tell us a bit about it? equipment/application(s) etc
I hardly have time to do much music these days, but I sometimes play a bit with tracking, and also use FruityLoops when I feel like it.
Have you followed the Amiga or demoscene at all since leaving the scene when you did? If yes, what do you think of the state of the scene today?
I'm not actively following the demoscene today, I do go to some local demo events, to get updated with whats going on. I find it very inspiring to see what these old computers still can do, and what people manage to get out of this old hardware we used for such a long time ago.
Would you ever consider doing any music for demos again, either on Amiga or modern platforms?
I hardly find time to do anything "demo" related these days, but maybe somewhere in the future. Hard to say
.
What do you feel you got out of the whole experience of being active in the Amiga demoscene? for example, did it lead you to make music professionally?
Being active and doing so many different things, I learned so much when I was active on Amiga, which helps me in the profession I got today, as a game developer. I was at one point on my way to become more professional with making music, but I choose another path. I don`t think I would have been here without the experience I got on the Amiga, its community and the friends I made during that time, things could have turned out very different. I'm very happy that I was able to be a part of the demoscene, and it has had an huge impact and helped me a lot to develop myself in what I'm doing today.
Have you ever considered remastering some of your old tunes?
I have been thinking about remastering my Carius tune, but my music skills are becoming more and more rusty as times fly by. We will see, maybe I will get in the mood someday and actually do it.
Is there anyone you would like to send some greetings to? Or perhaps you have some other last words?
I would like to send my biggest greets to Stingray, Ghandy, Zoltrix, Ramonster, Galahad, Sal-One, Modem, Virgill, Case, Mystra, Moby, Don-Cato, Zaner, Gleb and many more.
As for last words, I love to think back on the good old days on Amiga, the friendly people, and the friendships that were made, we all shared info to help each other. To bad Amiga ended its days to early.
Today I'm a CEO and game designer, and run a game developer company called
Misc Games.
Thank you all
.
That is the end of this interview, thanks for taking the time to do it Woober, I am sure our readers will appreciate it .
