I know, I know
 

Amigaboy: I'm talking about the time when I was about 13-14 :) I'm no longer impressed by these groups, but it still interests me to know a bit of the histories (especially the 'petite histoire'; i.e. who's who, what do they do, when and how did they meet and so on).

I can tell you, after corresponding for a while with a leet trader from one of the above mentioned groups, I quickly saw they weren't the demi-gods some of us (and sometimes myself, I must admit) saw them for. Reasons for my loss of faith? Writing style, sloppiness, personal background details that made me fear the worst and ultimately a scanned picture of the guy in his room :shocked (nothing pervy, the image itself was shocking enough).

sif I care about the scene. I never wanted to be part of it. It was something that was illegal, and I've always been against that

I never claimed it was anything special... I just explained about the poetry etc...

Still, your statements are, of course, inflammatory... so do tell which titles you could crack?

The people I was involved in did it for the challenge, for fun, not for money or to say how "cool" they were.

If anybody, other than Amigaboy, wants to know anything more I see no reason why not to give what info I can, about the groups I was in (Scoopex, Quartex, Dual Crew, Anthrox, Paradox).

After all it was years ago and seems like a whole different lifetime!

Yes! PLease post, in a differnt thread, in Nostalgia ^Memoeires, yoru history about the time you were in teh different groups! I love hearing them stories :) The otehr day I spent a lot of time reading about Alphaflight at their website :)

And I was always a sucker for long scrolltexts on the C64. I remember reading them and laughing my ass off :)

It was a challenge to break the latest code, to spread the first working version etc. If you got something you'd done to spread around the world it was a very cool feeling.

I never saw it as elitism, though, but I once was asked by a kid for my autograph!

I went to computer shows and tried to blag early betas etc. It was the done thing.

You might not like the illegal side of the scene, Amigaboy, but you must realise that if it wasn't for this trading then the "scene" would probably not have existed.

Intros and demos would not have developed as far as they did/have, contact among fans would not have been so large and this very forum would probably not exist (in this form).

:eek

That's true. But that was a tradeoff. Illegality for the scene

It just doesn't seem right to me

Can't you see Amigaboy is a superhero? LOOK AT HIS AVATAR! Suprheroes hear no evil! Superheroes see no evil! Superheroes talk no evil! Superheroes don't do drugs! Superheroes [snip!]

:D

[snip again] .... had a life! Superheroes have .... [/snip again again]

:laugh:laugh:laugh

Well sorry, but I see it totally different. Either you have a moral conscience or you don't. The fact that it's illegal is irrelevant (to me). And in some countries, it's not illegal. Does that make it OK to steal in those places since it's not illegal?

Just like so many of the musician friends of mine who still get high. I gave that stuff up some time ago, but it doesn't bother me that they still do (frankly, their drinking worries me more). But that is illegal and I think marijuana laws are stupid. And if I decided to start smoking pot again, the fact that it's illegal would mean nothing to me. Personal freedom is more important.

I'm not defending software piracy. Just debating the illegality aspect.

That's fine. But I personally prefer to stay on the legal side of things

The legal demo scene I still think is cool, only because the coders actually show off what they're capable of. They squeezed every little bit out of the machines they used....This is the sort of stuff that impresses me

True. The old school scene was the one that I respect more

Even seeing wireframe objects and simple shaded stuff is still impressive to me

Methanoid-Given the regularity with which all these groups cracked top Amiga titles did any of the Software houses concerned tried to approach your groups to write a disk-protection routine?? Did they,(or the programmers), ever regard these groups as an annoyance or something to be wiped out, or what? I'm guess I'm curious about their perception of these groups.

Yes-i realise it's like asking a mugger to give self-defence lesson's but I'm surprised they never considered getting any ex-members who might've been "converted" to the other side.

There was this article...
 

I remember a link being posted here, with a lot of info from a guy who wrote disk protection routines. I believe that in some of his routines he added comments daring some of the crackers (and mocking some of the wanne-be's).

Anyone got a link to that article/interview?

I'm assuming you're talking about the Rob Northern Interview at Codetapper's site

Well some of the group members of various groups I was in did have jobs "in the industry"... I dont recall anyone specifically writing copy protection routines...

I do however remember one title that got cracked thatr the programmer had written a message in the bootblock to the crackers.... he might have even guessed the group that did it..

BTW, anyone remember Ocean's claims about Robocop 3 being "uncrackable" cos of the dongle... seem to recall that was on the boards on the day of release... Fairlight crack IIRC.

There are still some good people on today's demoscene. Though teh work Made does today is VERY different to his works of teh past, he's still good. But I love the pixelly look of oldschool stuff :)


OH YEAH, I remember teh dongle shit. Hahaha they hit them hard in teh bollocks, with teh game being released so soon. Stuff the dongle up yours, Gary Bracey! :laughing

Speaking of games where the programmer put messages to crackers:

http://members.tripod.com/whdload/ri...artup_seq.html

I'm assuming the lines were commented out so noone would know they're there unless you look at the startup-sequence

Maybe Codetapper (?) only had an edited startup-sequence version